The weekly show where I answer your questions! This week, I take up these questions from my viewers:
(1) With funds coming in to the Church of Scientology dwindling, even the whales have limits. I feel Miscavige will be forced to dip into their huge reserve funds to keep the lights on in the Orgs. Do you agree? If so does that mean they are in a death spiral?
(2) Hey Chris, I was always curious about Scientology from the day I heard about it (I wasn’t looking to convert or anything, just curious in my study of religions) and I was wondering: Why, after everything that has been revealed about the church, do you think people still would convert to Scientology, or are there still people who are converting?
(3) Great show Chris! Question: If I was to decide to try and join Scientology (I wouldn’t) and told them I was flat broke and unable to obtain any money, would they take pity on me and allow me to do coursework anyhow? Or would they just show me the door and kick me out?
(4) Hi Chris: My question is about OT 3. It has been so widely publicized over the years, and although Scientologists are kept in a bubble, I find it hard to imagine in today’s information age they haven’t heard of its details. I’ve seen people bring it up to the body routers in the street when they try to solicit stress tests as well. If I were to walk into a Church of Scientology today and express interest in joining but voice concerns about thinking OT 3 is silly (in detail), I am certain they would just deny it’s existence. Suppose I stuck it out and paid enough money to get to OT 3 – would they really still put this in front of me? How can they still push this? Do you think they might scrap the Xenu story or would that be blasphemous since it came from Hubbard?
(5) Hi Chris! Great videos that have certainly educated me (and scared me) about the Church of Scientology. Are Scientologists homophobic?
AND
Hey Chris, have you experienced any homophobic behavior towards other Scientologists during your time there?
(6) Hello Mr. Shelton! You prefaced one of your videos by summing up your experiences at the Ontario Scientology Convention. You stated how it reinvigorated your interest in making more Scientology-related videos and that you now know definitively that Scientology is purely a money-generating scheme. Care to share a few of the factoids that influenced your conclusion?
(7) Chris, what is your educational background? You’re so good at explaining concepts, have you ever thought about becoming an educator?
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Chris, your videos have been very illuminating, severing the last few shreds that have connected me to Scientology. However, one question remains to be answered before I can be unequivocally free. It concerns the E-Meter. I have watched several videos debunking its use, but I have heard no explanations regarding (a) the ability to reproduce various needle motions with specific thoughts and (b) the appearance of distinct and varying needle motions within a specific process and its end result.(I was on OT VII for over 10 years) For example, the appearance of a “dirty needle” because of communication lapse,and its return to a “clean” needle by correcting those lapses; or motion of a “fall” of a certain length as a result of a given thought, and the same thought duplicating that “fall” exactly; or the thinking of death or loss resulting in a “theta bop”; or “floating needles” of various widths connected to feelings of relief…etc…etc. I know you are going to do a comprehensive video on the meter. Would you do an analysis of why these needle motions occur? Or could you direct me to someone who has dealt with this question?
Hi Michael,
There’s a good article on Wikipedia under the title “Electrodermal activity.”
The use of meters, such as the emeter have been going on for a long time. The Widipedia article gives you a good history and basic understanding of how and why it works.
The David Miscavige we are likely to imagine is that of the eighties and nineties ,he has been very isolated and the church’s riches seem to only benefit him.He and the the Church may very be subject to financial fraud.
Hi Chris, I like your stuff but I wish to make a comment about Homophobia. The book Science Of Survival was written in the early ’50’s, in a time when it was illegal and you could be fired from your job with the government for such practices. Now if you move up the track to the early sixties and have a look at the Missed withold technology, it is another person’s action that causes the person to go into a condition of uncertainity as to weather or not the out ethics situation is known or not. Now I have come to the conclusion that when one misses another’s out-ethic situation, they will come covertly hostile to you. In the church and you are given security checks or confessionals, knowledge reports are made and you can only guess at who knows what you have done. I would consider this a violation of the Auditors’ Code. Now one is sent to ethics to do conditions and make amends which usually involves making a cash donation. I wish to mention that there are basic courses at http://www.scientologycourses.org/sitemap.html I’m doing one now and it was free. Maybe in future years most training will be like that. You send in a JPEG of your CD( clay demo.) And by the way, City Of Toronto is in The Province of Ontario but that’s OK, I can only guess where upstate New York is. Joe
Well, here is an example of why I get skiddish around independent scientologists.
Joe, undoubtedly a good person, just asked us to refer to the tech and says… something laced with jargon very abstract and obviously derived from the “teachings” he is still assumming to be valid.
“Now, if you move up the track…” Look what is actually happening there, by evidence of what he is saying.
All of us, without exception, carry around our beliefs and pre-concieved ideas. They could be conscious or sub-conscious, but once held will automatically accept or reject new information as valid or invalid depending on whether they support or contradict whatever it is that we, as individuals, have agreed to.
All of which categorically falls outside the school of the scientific method. It is just the human method, intuition if you will, wherein the brain is constantly working to determine what is real, what is good, bad or indifferent, how it relates to the self, et cetera.
Look at Joe doing the same thing here, as he nearly justifies the heinous LRH evaluation of homosexual behavior as something written to fit into the social norms of the time it was written. This is a man for whom Clear, the Reactive Mind and Engrams would be real and actual things, or at least as the description of actual things.
Just like I did, btw, for a few decades even after I got out, I was still believing in tech, as they say.
I was still in love with Ron until quite recently. I was such a good Scientologist before that, practicing until 1975 or so. And yes, it was a different church back then.
We (those of us here, studying critical thinking) have established this “thing” called scientology to be clearly deceptive, offering things it could not possibly deliver being at the top of a long list of false promises. Next would be the secret activities done to protect the church, operation Snow White comes to mind. But, basically EVERYTHING, nearly everything happening in the upper echelons of Scientology is kept for the day-to-day Scientologist, including Sea Org. Who actually does what is generally unknown, except for knowing the name David Miscavige. Then, the willingness to ruin families, destroy personal finance, work children, not pay their most dedicated followers or provide any sort of security for old age, all adds up to the indisputable conclusion that this church operates for the benifit of itself and not the members. How many billions could the properties be worth? How good is the church at making money, and how can it possibly manipulate so many minds into willingly impoverishing themselves, and governments to grant tax-free status?
Is the danger not clear?
I need to add to that,
that LRH was in fact a self-proclaimed Messiah. Give me a better yardstick for insanity.
The fact remains that he died in hiding, his body riddled with drugs, his mind quite apparently failing or falling to acute paranoia.
“Tech.”
To this day, there is but one family member inof the Hubbard family blood-line who willingly speaks to it, the story of Scientology, and that is Jamie DeWolf-Hubbard, a lucid and stark critic of both the church and its founder; LRH is his great grand-father. Are you a student of mind-control and brainwashing? No? Then what are you doing, doing research that begins with taking The Reactive Mind as a thing that actually exists? Why are exposing yourself to Scientology words and principles when none of it is based on scientific principles and the church actually suppresses critical thought? Is that not dangerous enough?
I think you would be far better off, taking something, anything, taught in Scientology as being inherently wrong, then looking for scientific proof to the contrary.
But the more effective method of finding something worthwhile to believe in – would be to simply pick up your bag, put on your labcoat and run like hell, far-far away.
The “technology” certainly does work, to the degree that its founder got wealthy; and that, in my view is about it. Joe, I don’t meant to chew you up, honestly. I have a lot of admiration for everyone who contributes here, and thank you for letting your truth be known.
Did you have health insurance or retirement benefits when you were in the Sea Org?
What did you think would happen to you when you got old or sick?
What actually happens to elderly or ill Sea Org members?
Perhaps I could field this one, sharing what I learned from Chris on the subject and my personal experience being once a devoted member of the cult:
To the first Q regarding retirement, the answere is an unequivocal “No”, which qualifies as yet another abuse of staff, especially given that Sea Org are barely paid enough wage to cover the expense of their own tooth brushes.
When there was no recourse, a visit to emergency would be (reluctantly) paid for, but I venture to say that that expenditure was justified as a means of avoiding bad PR and not so much as a pragmatic action of providing health care. Believe me, if they thought it would work they would try to fix a broken arm with a splint and a “touch-assist”. In fact, there is not doubt in my mind…
This second question is entirely subjective as none of us can really do more than pretend to fool ourselves into thinking that we know what another person is thinking, but, given that, I am enthused to give you my take , and give you what I was thinking as I was giving my daily life to these people.
The focus of Scientology, in relation to the practitioner, is to make you believe that Scientology is revealing to you the secret of immortality. That is (basically) what we become focused on. We were mostly young and did not think at all about getting old, saw death as something of a stepping stone rather than the end. The thing is, we absolutely did “believe” that Scientology worked. Old age simply was not something entering our minds, especially as we were always frenetically involved with improving our “stats” (measure of production) one week to the next – lest we thrown into Ethics (punishment). So, you see, first we were duped, or brainwashed if you will, then we were denied the opportunity to ponder very real things, like old age, by keeping us working ever more fenetically. This plan would appear short-sighted to the rational person, but I think rightly so, and serves, in part, as to why the church is failing today. The jig is up.
The third question, well, let me shirk my responsibilities a little now and just say…
let your imagination take up the answer. Whatever you come up with, my bet is that the reality of the situation is probably much worse.
Hi Chris
I don’t understand how people who blow from Scientology are able to get out and provide for themselves after being in for years and years. My impression is that prior to them going in they had very little education and not many job skills in today’s tech savy world. Scientology doesn’t seem to offer any transferable job skills to the real world so what kind of jobs do these people get and aren’t most of these people who do get get out older now?