This report and promo piece was sent in by a Special Correspondent. Remember, Stevens Creek is not just an “Ideal Org” it is a “St Hill Size Org” and they cannot muster enough people to even get 10 real graduates in a photo? That fact alone tells you everything you could need to know about the state of “Ideal Orgs.” [Not to mention NOT ONE Academy Level Completion and NOT ONE Grade completion].
Stevens Creek Org put out their magazine and this picture is included.
The guy in the back row holding up the cert is the one and only John Allender. (Photo right) (your left)
Only problem is he, and the entire back row, aren’t on lines at Stevens Creek Org. He’s holding a cert for a course he didn’t complete, at an org he’s not on service for. Just another day in the facade of rotating public for picture ops.
John’s on service at Los Gatos Org.
That’s Penny Silber-Rachef in the front row. She’s Mountain View. Hasn’t done a course in years, and not SNC Christine Zeitler (Silicon Valley Mission Holder) and Steve Guzeta are in the back row.
This picture lists the completions, and you can see they don’t match the fake happy faces holding certs.
The front row does have a few token completions that match the completions list.
The even bigger story is that most of the names on the “Recent Completions” list are the same people who have stuck around Stevens Creek for the last 20 or 30 years, never doing more than a basic div 6 course just to “stay onlines”. These are the same people who are constantly pressured to show up at every IAS event and Idle Morgue “fundraiser”. They have tremendous amout of personal debt and are not moving up the bridge. Stevens Creek only had ONE Academy completion, and that was the Student Hat! This is appalling considering that Stevens Creek is in the middle of Silicon Valley and has access to hundreds of thousands of wealthy non Scientologists. One would expect them to be making hundreds of auditors per week. Instead, you get the existing scene…. an Idle Morgue where you have to use pictures of people at a simulated graduation who aren’t even onlines at Stevens Creek. Also, look at the “Processing Completions” – Life Repair, Purification Rundown, Objectives – real basic, bottom of the bridge type stuff. Two of the names on the Purification Rundown are two fulltime staff members who have been there for over 20 years – Randy & Julie Merrill. Stevens Creek will routinely get existing public to re-do the purif. multiple times because they can count the stat on their WDAHs.
Some thoughts:
How often is this magazine issued? It says that these are “recent completions”, but does that mean in the past week? month? 6 months? Year?
Were these same completions listed in earlier issues?
What kind of a “stat report” is this?
In other words, where is TIME plotted on this “graph”?
Possible Outpoint: Looks like dropped out time to me.
My guess is it was not photoshopped. However, these folks are posing! They are not comps, most aren’t even regular public of this Idle Morgue. They are fake, just like the entire Cof$.
The org is so pathetic they have no new people, just recycled unconscious “OTs” and a few brainwashed 2nd generation types.
Sad!
This whole thing is so pathetic
Should the people who pose for these promotions be required to join Actors’ Equity?
“Stevens Creek Org Students & Preclears Are Moving Up The Bridge”
LOL – based on the actual list of completions following that statement, they are rather moving in circles UNDER the Bridge…
Yeah, the “basics courses” are a joke. A couple or so pre-written “test questions” are asked. The student is permitted to look in the book or the tape transcript while answering them. Thus it is easily possible to “graduate” from these courses in a completely glib manner.
Traditionally, most of these basic books were required reading for different auditor training courses depending on which course one was taking. After reading the book the student often received what is called a “star-rate checkout” from a fellow student or the course supervisor on what was covered in the book. This means that the student would be asked not only to describe basic principles addressed in the book, but also was supposed to be asked questions which would show that he UNDERSTOOD those principles. He was then asked to describe how he would APPLY those principles to life and/or an auditing session.
The way these courses are currently delivered opens the door wide for glibness and an inability to apply.
I know who 7 people in the photo are and only 1 of them is a named as a graduate. I believe the Org mags are supposed to be put out quarterly, but most Orgs are always behind schedule due to lack of funds to put the mag out. So I would say this is 3-5 months worth of graduates.
Science debunks Rewards & Penalties! It only works for ROBOTS.
http://youtu.be/u6XAPnuFjJc
Obnosis, that’s very interesting.
As correct as it gets. Very nice presentation.
Ok there were 104 completions listed for 60 courses, so less than 2 completions per “course” if you can call what they are listing courses. Add to that the multiple listing of names Edson Menses (4) Aryana Manson (3) Federico Rincon (2) Alisha Ekhardt (4) Jorge Osuna (2), Michael Williams (2) Ruth Kennedy (6) Sheila Pauly (6) Brad Cochran (2) and Jerry Pope (2), so these 10 people are 35 of the listings so 30% of the completions were done by 10 of the people. The course names take up more room on the page than the people names and the desperation in listing “Dear Alice” as a course is just sad. It almost looks to me as though the left 3 are shooped in also but what does it matter with the sad list of people on there? False stats are false stats.
Pretty much SOP since the Golden Age of Squirreling or GAS began.
All ya gotta do is look at is Scientology’s actual stats internationally (as opposed to board feet, buildings acquired, inches of press good or bad, etc) like Student completions for example to see that the Organization hasn’t expanded more in the last 5 years then in all previous decades.
And that in reality the Church of Scientology is contracting faster than some black star.
Though these stat comparisons were done a few years back. It still gives one an ideal of management’s complete and abject failure:
http://www.friendsoflrh.org/Section2/
From the git go, Stevens Creek, Mt. View, and San Francisco have been way over their heads for a very long time.Possibly began in the 1970’s but all of these Org’s/missions
started keeping SECRET files on Public and staff that the people who were the subject material of the secret files could not see or have access to. Mostly inflammatory lies
or entheta attacks to character. My observation it kept people stalled until they ran out of money for services that never got delivered.Even if you moved away they would press the attack as if you still right there in the Org although you were long gone for decades.
Fake promo is the tip of the ice berg.
The shadows are strange. It looks possibly like one or more photography lights were set up. But there appears to be a shadow of an arm to the left of Allender and where is the shadow from the guy to his right?
Could be a composite of a few different graduations or poses. This is going to get some real scrutiny and contribution on this subject now so I just looked over it quickly.
For example, the two women in the front (purple striped sweater and woman to her camera right) are lit exactly the same, same appearance to their light reflection and colors. But check out that dent in the purple sweater woman’s head just above her ear. It looks like the lavendar shirt sleeve behind her is amoeba-izing into her head.
I also think the certs being held by the back people on the right are a cheat because there is lettering over it and white fuzzy stuff so you don’t have to have real names or completions writtin on those.
It’s a lot less ovbious than the Portland fiasco though. At least they’re trying to learn. Off we go….!
One feels for Alisha Ekhardt…
I don’t know her, but one can get a glimpse of her life, just by virtue of taking note of the courses she has “recently” completed.
Maintaining a Happy Marriage
Salvaging and Marriage
Having a Happy Baby
Successfully Raising Children
Successfully ParentingTweens and Teens
Yes, Aurora. One feels for her.
The forced smiles in the back row look much better than the forced smiles in the front row. Practice makes perfect, I suppose.
Due to this type of entheta printed by you bloggers on the fringes of internet, I predict that an order from up lines will be issued that cancels the practice of printing lists of completions, as of a date real soon, but not released yet.
No Academy Level completions, no Grade completions. A bunch of people studying endless Theory and not Doing anything!
Indeed tells me what I wanted to know. I’ve been thinking (hoping) since Penny hasn’t been onlines in years that maybe she (and hubby Jerry Racheff, ED, SFO Fdn) were on their way out. Apparently not.
So glad I’m out of that fraud, so I don’t have to stand there acting out of valence & living a lie.
Betsy, I like your new picture. Very nice.
I wonder whether the Miscavige-Allender relationship is strained. At one point I understood the RCS to say that the squirrel busters were acting on their own volition, and now they confess they were behind the 199 day siege etc. I guess throwing Allender et al under the bus was not an option (what would Allender say if he had to testify), and so Miscavige probably makes Allender feel even more obligated to him. Maybe that is why he pitches up at photo ops. Maybe.
Not one Grades completion. Not one auditor course completion. The two products of an org are # of Well Done Auditing Hours and # of Auditors made. No auditors made and only one Life Repair done. The Purifs and Objectives may just be recycles of people who did them earlier. If it weren’t for the Congresses, and the Basics book and lecture courses which DM invented, there would be no one on the list there practically. Maybe DM saw the dwindling stats of Well Done Auditing Hours and Number of Auditors Made, so he drummed up re-issuing the books and forcing everyone to re train on the books, just so that they’d have something to print for completions. At any rate, as any veteran Scn will tell you, in the old days we had way more real and actual completions each week and there were lots of auditors being made and lots of auditing happening. Those were the days, pre-GAG and pre-DM’s shennanigans.
Is that a scanning problem? I see that the colour below John Allender’s hand is darker. It is nearly one dark brown. Could it be that he was not even holding up a certificate; or that he was not present at all?
This is probably pure Photoshop.
The guy on the right side has a VERY STRONG shadow. I cannot see that everywhere. John’s certificate has a weak yellowish shadow, but probably too strong on the brown.
I’m wondering if any or many of their book and lecture course completions are just extention courses and that’s why they need shills for the comp photo.
Did they really think that folks wouldn’t notice the outpoints? I guess that’s just a rhetorical question since it’s obvious they don’t notice much of anything these days.
Extension courses would explain not being there, but you would think that they could find more shills for a photo-opp.
If you train auditors who in turn audit public to CLEAR
end result is a Big Booming Org. “What we have here is a Failure to communicate”
( Cool Hand Luke, Paul Newman) You would have to get all the false data off the lines, cancel all false who’s and why’s and go to bare bones making of trained auditors who get
results. Fundraising is a dead end, even at Flag. .
Oh I missed something. On the last column, above of “Academy Courses” there is a completion on “Dear Alice”. I imagined she read the whole book and became a stat. Why not add too “The Wizard of Oz” or other children classics?
I know! What the heck is that?!
Silvia, you go girl! You are too funny!
Silvia, because you can’t “read” The Wizard of Oz when you’re IN The Wizard of Oz.
IDEAL IDIOT FORMULA: Step #1 Find Out What Org You’re In. Step #2 LEAVE NOW.
Step #3 Don’t Go Back.
They have now managed to really “condense” the Bridge to only Basics, Purif and Objectives. No wonder you can move up faster than ever….
Silvia,
If you did your OT8, then did the “new” Basics, Purif and Objectives, where are you on the Bridge now?
As Power FSM David Howsen would say, “you’re in the abyss…. you’re either on the Bridge or in the abyss.” I”ll take my chances in the abyss even if it contained alligators and crocks.
The Golden Age of IDEAL IDIOTS!
Are the “real” completions the ones in the first row? The guy and girl on the left, and then the girl to the right of the blond woman? They look like the only ones who aren’t well-practiced at putting on excited happy faces. In fact, they look constipated.
“RECENT COMPLETIONS.” make that RECENT IDIOTS!
“How to Improve Relationships with Others”, now there is a course that folks at the highest levels (DM) should really take a look at. We know for sure showing up wearing camera hats is not going to improve relations. A punch to the face, a finger being bent back or forced to the bathroom floor to lick the tile clean likewise do not improve relations with others.
Maybe when Dave is taxing out to the runway and finally cleared for take-off to Bolivia he will consider for a moment employing some of the ideas in that course to keep good relations with his new hosts while he lives out his life.
The best part of this whole thing is that John Allender probably got the Squirrel Buster gig based off of a Anonymous Protest stunt he pulled. He was made to look like a fool by a bunch of masked kids up in Northern Cali in 2008 and that made him qualified to go to Texas.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvX9xWAsEuQ
The OSA/church bullies always start off assuming that bullbaiting and insults that work on other church members will work on protesters or journalists. The insults and rage provide quite a window into how church members are treated. The bullies always end up so frustrated when it doesn’t work. Allender is on a Mark Bunker tape raging after he failed to have Bunker evicted from the roof of a Portland building. His failure was made even more ridiculous because he claimed Bunker was trespassing when, in fact, it was Allender that was trespassing. Before this fiasco, Allender failed to convince police Bunker was throwing things off the roof. And all of this happened two years after Allender failed to shut down Marty Rathbun in Texas. (Why do the Wiley Coyote cartoons come to mind?). The sad part of the whole thing is Allender is considered nothing by Miscavige, just another body to photo shop into a graduation. His loyalty to Miscavige is certainly not reciprocated.
THANK YOU, ANONYMOUS!!!!!!
YOU’VE MADE SUCHA DIFFERENCE.
We were there that day. John and Mark were too afraid to come out until we left. at :52, you can hear a horn honk, thats us. Right after that Allender tell our anonymous friend that I am guilty of being an adulterer. Big bad OT trys to have anonymous think badly of us. I will always love these guys and gals for helping me stand up to what I was once so afraid of.
by the way, Allender has always been a douche. There are names I recognize on completion lists. People who have been there for 30 years or more and they are taking basic courses again.
Yea, Allender did not need any help from those kids. He is a natural fool…:D
I thought OT8s were supposed to be able to handle/control anything and anyone. That’s all he’s got? Bigot… bigot… bigot… I want you to stay out here for the whole 2 hours… bigot … bigot…. motherf*cker… motherf*cker… etc… etc… Really? Does a video exist anywhere that demonstrates an OTn applying scientology and handling/controlling a situation successfully?
The church hasn’t made any real OTs in decades. Miscavige squirreled the upper (and lower) Bridge so badly, that current OTs have about the same degree of spiritual advancement that people once achieved on the lower levels.
The only real OTs are being made in the Indie field today.
FWIW, I have never met a “real OT” or even a “real Clear”, though I have met people who feel they’ve been helped by Scientology.
Dropped out time. As John P. has already pointed out, “Recent” can mean anything.
Let’s look at Mr Jogn Ragsac. A quick glance shows he recently completed:
How to Get Motivated (What on Earth is that? PE repackaged?)
StCC
Intro to Scn Ethic bk
Purif
Life Repair
Ruth Kennedy has listened to five congresses, none of them short.
No clears or auditors were made in a period that is likely to cover at least the last quarter.
People familiar with Stevens Creek will be able to say whether the Purif and Objective completions are re-dos.
As always, it is more apparency than substance.
LOL…what a joke!!! the How to improve relationships with others course needs to be taken by all of these people!!!!!!
Mr J. P. Capitalist
I was in for 35 years. I am an entrepreneur.
The “major” auditing completion is one life repair. And, the major” training is a Student Hat. Both are the smallest “major” completions for an Org. The few non-major services (12) are a type of supervised co-auditing (Objectives and Purif) The rest of the completions are just glorified “feel good” completions reading books and all of these should really be done at home or on a commuter train reading a book. That’s how it was done during the booming days of Scientology pre 1982.
In terms of time for all these completions, I would guess 3 months. But it’s just a guess, the 12 services were probably more like 6 months…. In terms of cash paid in weekly for these courses? Not enough to pay full time staff 50 cents per hour.
How do they deliver almost nothing and stay alive and still send $ millions to HQ?? It’s easy: get people to read LRH. He’s a fascinating read. But, don’t deliver any major auditing or training! Once the new public gets a taste of DM’s altered auditing and training tech, they leave. It’s too altered and does not work. People get very upset and want refunds! And, its a LOT of WORK to deliver training and auditing.
His solution? Get people in by selling them books (the fascinating read) and then make them take courses on reading books instead of delivering his totally altered and fucked (backwards) services that don’t work. DM’s GAG I & II services MAKE people leave. Very ugly stuff.
Then, while they are on a book course reading about OTs changing the world, pluck their wallets “to save the world” with their money while they wait to become OT themeselves. So, while these pigeons are on these “feel good” courses they pay money for nothing in exchange (which is very profitable). And, they are sure to do this plucking BEFORE the pigeon figures out what’s going on…. (and make sure they sign away any rights for a refund, so when they do figure what is going on, the pigeon can’t get their feathers back. It’s too late. Ha Ha sucker)
That’s it Mr. Capitalist. Auditing and training is a complete bust at Orgs. Money is paid for nothing but to make the plucked pigeon think he/she is part of some big, growing “save the planet” organization with big OTs and big buildings to “prove” they are, well, big and OT and expanding. But, they are just crooks and a straight con. A straight ripp- off with no redeeming qualities except trashing the subject of Scientology and LRH, if that is what you are interested in…The fact is, DM has done to Scientology what no government or enemy could do from 1950 to 1982… obliterate it… Too bad I say. Bravo, others say. Either way, same result.
The vast majority of those courses are Basics or Personal Improvement courses. I believe they are 100 or less, 125 tops. Same for Student Hat. Purif is about 2000. The life repair guy probably paid 4000-5000. I’m guessing the time frame was 2 months, possibly 3.
Objectives were probably all co-audits at 900.
I’m guessing there is about 30-35K of services delivered.
Only 1 completion, the Life Repair, was done by an Org auditor.
Now that is planetary clearing with a vengeance.
But, hey, it LOOKS good. Appearances become reality. I also like the Power Process command across the back, though they can’t even get that right.
John, at first glance it looks li,e the majority of these courses afe cheap filler with small packs. The sort of thing you get regged for at Flag if they catch you sitting around the pool. Esily finished in a couple of days. And they don’t get you anywhere on the bridge.
Also, I notice that many of the completions are the same person, having completed several things. For example, Ruth Kennedy finished 6 things. Writing out the titles of the services takes up more room on the page than the names themselves.
How recent is “recent”?
Sheila Pauly is on the list several times. She is doing the Congress courses.
But you cannot do them in one week.
So is the defintion of “recent” probably 2 months?
And have a look at Alisha Ekhardt. Same as with Sheila Pauly.
You can see that she is married and has children.
John looks a little glum. I wonder what’s wrong.
Thats a very “tight” crowd shot. I guess the photographer wanted a good shot of the back of the staffs heads to the exclusion of everybody else in the room.
Stevens Creek Org was Ground Zero of De Dinging.
Mt. View is another disaster. When I was “IN” an OT8
tried to recruit me when they were “All Hands fundraising”
That’s Public, Staff, auditors, course supes, 24/7.
No auditing, no course completions , no Scientology at all
.It was one big “boiler room” of Beggars.No Exchange.
I was a turning point in my decision to resign from Scientology.
wow…so very telling as to the state of delivery…mostly book, lecture and Div 6 completions.
And those poor people who actually did finish Student Hat, Purif and Objectives…don’t they know they will be programed to redo it tomorrow?
A dead give-away of peanut-sized companies are the generic stock photos of happy photogenic employees on their web site. If it wasn’t for having to include some signs of Scientology, I’m sure that the empty orgs would do the same.
It would be useful to try to figure out how they define “recent” when they say “recent completions.” By looking at the names who appear as having completed multiple courses, and figuring out about how long it takes to do any of these courses, we can figure out whether the time period of “recent” is a month, six months, two years, or whatever. Then we can get an interesting picture of how much actual Scientology is being done in the Stevens Creek org. That could also help us figure out how much Gross Income is helping “boom” that org.
Ultimately, we can then use that estimate of Stevens Creek GI to further triangulate on our estimate of just how much money is coming into the RCS empire overall. This is something you do in my line of work analyzing stock investments at Global Capitalism HQ: you constantly “scrub” your estimates and try to find new data and then apply that to cross-check your estimates of financial performance.
Since I’m a never-in and haven’t heard of some of these courses (I had to look up the “London Congress on Nuclear Radiation”), I have no idea what is involved in completing these. Also, those of you familiar with such things could help me out if you could sketch the relative importance of some of these classes relative to things like L’s, OT-related classes, Objectives, etc. In other words, are these courses primary moneymakers for an Org or are they just stuff that they try to get people to take when they’ve extracted all the possible money they can from “core” services?
Most of the courses on that list are loss leaders. I’m not familiar with the SC field, but I’d guess a lot of the life improvement courses and congresses are done by OTs who are putting in an appearance. Somebody who knows the current local auditing rates will be able to calculate roughly how much the life repair and objectives brought in.
You can bet your private jet the staff aren’t getting paid anything worth mentioning. No matter how much comes in, management wants its cut, so most will go uplines.
All you do on to complete these courses is study the lectures and answer ONE question about each lecture. The person at Int Management who writes the questions picks one datum out of a 60-minute lecture and asks a question about it and the student has to write out the answer. There could be 5-6 other datums on that lecture that could be considered major to someone who really wanted to learn Scn, but all they have to know is the answer to that one question.
Also an org is supposed to be training auditors as their number one priority but these courses are pure theory and they provide no practical training as auditors. You will notice there are zero auditor training course completions on that list.
Also, those courses are not a cash cow because they don’t cost that much. I really don’t see much money motivation for having these courses because they are so inexpensive.
The only thing I can think of that would be a money-motivated reason for having these courses might be the fact that it keeps the person on lines so that he is willing and available (physically in the org) to donate huge sums to the IAS, Ideal Orgs and the multitudes of other fund-raising that goes on.
These courses are relatively unimportant in terms of what is the reason that course rooms were established in the first place. Whether you agree with Hubbard’s tech or not, it is easy to see that the church has gone astray from Hubbard’s purpose (aside from money) in establishing these course rooms.
From the viewpoint of someone who wants to learn Scientology basic understandings, these courses are pretty good if you need help as a student and if the course supervisor is someone who knows when to help the student and when to leave him alone, and knows HOW to help the student when he needs it and who doesn’t try to jam the information down someone’s throat.
But because all you do on these courses is study the stuff one time through and there is zero practical application required, there is a limit to how much a person gets out of them. I don’t know too many people who can study such a pile-on of information just one time with no practical application, and retain more than just a fraction of what is there. Maybe there are some but I’m not one of them, and I don’t observe that there are too many who can do that. To really get something out of it permanently, requires much more dedicated study than these courses offer.
I often saw that people had big wins, realizations, etc, on the courses that they would talk about and that’s good, from that viewpoint. But as to how much of the information they can use down the road, that’s another thing.
Also, in answer to your question about their relative importance compared to the OT levels and the Ls, etc, that’s a matter of opinion, but I think if Hubbard were around and still had his wits about him, and he saw this being done, he would be raising hell at seeing the fact that these courses have taken over Scientology course rooms. They are purely a Miscavige-era invention.
I guess there are two reasons why no Auditors are trained:
a) they are at Flag
b) staff knows GAT II is coming, why should you start anyone on OBSOLETE levels?
And the third reason auditors are not trained: because the meters are obsolete, what with the New and Improved Super Duper Mark VIII meter that has been in mothballs for 10 years at Int.
i think for newbies, these iittle Div 6 courses are great. When i came in, i did some of them, and had great wins which propelled me into Life Repair, which propelled me into TRs & Objectives, and so on.
The Big Brick Wall comes in at the Grades, either training or processing. The stupid “church” makes either route so F’ing expensive that most people are stopped right there.
Yes, people should be on course training on the Levels. But shit, just the damn meter costs as much as a good used car.And little Davie doesnt really want a mass of competant auditors running around. Hell, if you had that, then (in his dimwitted way of thinking) fewer people would be paying for “professional auditing.” Not only that, you have would have a whole bunch of people trained to follow policy and really look at real scenes.
That’s not something Davie can affort to be common place. Not in the Peoples Republic of Scientology.
Dave, that’s right, there is zero application in these Basics courses, they are purely significance. Yet in virtually every lecture and book LRH would indicate either some processes or at least give you something to try out and actually do yourself to test what he says. This not possible on a Miscavige course in a Miscavige courseroom; there aren’t even any clay demos to do. Aside from the sheer tedium of studying thousands and thousands of words, these courses violate the basic principle of theory and mass. They must be hell to do; and at the end, you’re not competent let alone qualified to do a single thing.
Poet 13 you hit the nail on the heat. I also noticed that when they re-did the BC and you had to do all the tapes before you could ever audit, people would be for years on the BC doing only significance and never auditing. That was done on purpose by DM so as to blow off most of the auditors in training before they ever comped the BC. And as you say, by the time the die hards who did stay got to the end of the course where you could finally audit, by then they were so messed up they couldn’t audit. A few measley demos is not the same as auditing on each level which is how it used to be in the earlier days. I remember an LRH reference where he says the way to do it is to get the auditors in the chair quickly! As in read it, drill it, do it. If you wanted to destroy the auditor training so that no auditing occurs, you would do exactly as DM did to the BC.
John, Amazing how you can logically gather data and “triangulate it” to show the full picture. Good thing we have people like you with brains in the country. I don’t know exactly the time frame on all the courses, but yes, they are NOT big money makers. Training typically is not a huge money maker, which is why the FSMs, as one of our commenters pointed out the other, all get their pcs to Flag for the big ticket auditing, things like L’s, OT Levels, Flag Only Rundowns, etc. But LRH emphasized how important training is, and he was right. In the old days we coaudited our way to Clear. It was economical that way for us and it was such a win to be able to deliver the tech to another person. It gave you wins just by being responsible for another person, applying the tech to them and seeing them win with it.
…are these courses primary moneymakers for an Org or are they just stuff that they try to get people to take when they’ve extracted all the possible money they can from “core” services?
John, most of the courses you see listed above are in the ‘about’ Scientology category. They’re entry level courses designed to impart a small degree of education on the subject to the student, and (in a few cases) to provide the student with some useful data to help them address the challenges of life.
By way of analogy, I would say that one could compare them to background filler courses at a university, where people are being trained as engineers, doctors, and scientists. The list of completions reveals that Stevens Creek org isn’t training or graduating any PhD’s or cum laudes who can go out and produce a product in the real world.
Stevens Creek isn’t even graduating beginners who can coaudit TR’s and Objectives.
Hey JP,
For a never-in, your ability to suss out the inner working of a scientology organization is admirable.
These “completions” are courses that are mainly introductory in nature. Usually the big-money services would be done by someone at some later point. It is true, however, that people who have already done high-priced services might do some of these courses – they are under tremendous pressure to be “active.” Many of these courses are part of “The Basics”, which are services based on the re-re-release of books a few years ago, and which have been being heavily pushed.
There is virtually no auditing happening in Steven’s Creek. Auditing and training (courses) are both sold and delivered. Both are supposed to be important. Auditing generally brings in more money.
Many of these services consist of reading a book or listening to a series of lectures or both. On an official scientology course, this takes *much* longer than if a person were doing this at home. The student is stopping often to look up words and to look up words used in the definitions. They will be required to demonstrate many things using clay or small items. They will have to write essays. They will have to do long drills where parts of the text are memorized verbatim, or the student learns to parrot back key ideas in the book or lecture.
I am guessing, but I’d say a ballpark time estimate for one of these longer courses would be two weeks full-time (i.e. on course 40 hours per week). Generally, particularly in “local” orgs like Steven’s Creek, these students are not full-time, but instead are on course maybe eight hours a week. I’d bet that many of them average more like five hours per week.
In the list in Mike’s post, I see at least five people who have completed more than one of the longer courses. These are the “Congress Courses” (series of lectures) and the book courses. Jorge Osuna completed two book courses, Brad Cochran completed two book courses (including the Science of Survival book and lectures course, which is probably the longest course on the list), Ruth Kennedy completed five Congress Courses, Sheila Pauly completed six Congress Courses, and Jerry Pope completed two book courses. There may be more people with multiple completions, but these are the ones I saw cursorily. (I’m not sure if the extensive drilling is done on the Congress Courses.)
In any event, a very rough estimate for how long it would take these people to complete these courses is 15 weeks on a part-time basis. I doubt that all of these people have been on a full-time schedule. So, since they might have started one of the courses prior to the “recent” time period, it is likely that the “recent” completion happened in the last three months or so. Maybe four months, but at least two. Someone please correct me if I am off on this.
I wonder how Steven’s Creek can pay bills for their utilities, phones, Internet, materials and other expenses. The staff get paid next to nothing.
Is it possible that Steven’s Creek is incapable of giving the higher level/higher earning courses due to lack of qualified people?
Good post Bruce Hines. Hey, are you related to Sonia Hines and I think her husband is Terrance Hines?
Hi JD,
No, I’m not related to them. I did know them at the FSO in the 80s where we were all on staff. I used to jokingly call the husband “my brother Terence.” I’m as white as they come. Both of them left the s.o. at some point. Terence went into acting.
JP,
The Golden Age of Knowledge courses, I would guess, at the very fringes could take up to a week and a half to complete. Probably most people are done within a week. The Life Improvement Courses could take two weeks, at the longest three.
JP Cap – You can find amazing videos of OTs talking about their experiences on YouTube, and how crazy Flag is.
JPC: “Omitted Time” gets the award for the most-invoked outpoint in Scientology Inc reports of “progress”.
LOL!
John P., the term ‘recently’ in these usually means – since the last newsletter went out. Since all the courses vary and you don’t know if a particular student was going one period a week or five, it’s kind of hard to figure out that way. It would be interesting though to see if an Org is stretching the interval between newsletters in order to have more completions to report in each one.
And I might add that besides having maybe 5 or 6 months between newsletters to make the completions number look bigger,I have found in some cases they also include people from other places, like St Hill and other places in the stat to make it look big.
Wow! One Acad course completion?!?!? That’s it?! Kinda hard to make any auditors or clear people that way.
This is probably for a span of 3 or 4 months. It makes me sad and nauseous all at the same time.
And that course was the Student Hat!
Like a cold water slap in the face, sometimes the truth is unavoidably shocking. By now many of us are no longer shocked at what we read here, yet it often has incredible power to confirm and even direct some decisions. I confess, it is still somewhat of a process for me, I think I’m finished, yet I come again to find more items “reading”. The “Impact” ( I think that’s actually one of the magazine’s names!) that someone made on me when I first started reading the blogs was engraved in my mind when I compared the comps lists of 2 pages (and NO goofy “how to balance your checkbook” courses), to today’s half page comps. A 3rd grader can see the < less than signs! From your first course you learn about "stats" for student graphs, etc. I am beginning to wonder if those still-in can really be "there" if they can't smell the rot at this point in time. Forgive my impatience, I just can't wait to see the conditions change for our friends and get a full recovery for everyone.
I had to go back and search for the one Student Hat completion after reading your post. I didn’t even see it the first time. How sad is that?
And…. ONE grade chart action……but they “are moving up The Bridge” Say what? Impressive. Probably the comps for the past five years.
This is probably for a span of 3 or 4 months…
That might have been the time frame a couple decades ago. These days, I wouldn’t be surprised if these completions are for the last year.
Let me get this straight; this is a recently staged photo? They actually had these named individuals “model” as recent cert earners?
Yes I’m with Heidi. I can hardly believe it. Are they now photoshopping in pictures of people taken from other graduations at other orgs not even near that one? Or are they just calling in people from anywhere and asking them to fake pose with a fake cert for a photo? Either way, they’ve sunk to a new low. It would be fun if one of those fake people in the picture sued them for using their image without their permission (if it was photoshopped). I’d love for every IN the church person to see your article today. But even if they saw it with their own eyes, they wouldn’t believe it. This is like that movie where the news station started using old footage of fires when news was slow… they created their own news with re-runs of old footage. And it smacks of George Orwell’s “1984.”
I’d love for every Still-In to see ….. anything! That plexiglass deflection shield comes down real fast when you something “entheta”. It’s not entheta or black PR if it’s TRUE.
A funny thing is the Still-Ins have heard something is going on … “Oh, there are couple of SPs saying things….” They’ve heard something about what a traitor Debbie Cook (how dare she collect e-mail address of Scientologists!!!) and Mike Rinder has done terrible things. It says a lot that they even know that.
They think Miscavige really is behind massive expansion, so they feel loyal to him. Ah, if they only knew, there are more declared than actual members.
I just finished “Counterfeit Dreams” What an amazing look at life in the SO and at the Int Base. Miscavige has to be the most incompetent bully on Earth. I can see why there are no more events – there’s no one left to put them together. He’s gotten rid of everyone.
. . . and then there were none.
All the completions are at the rock-bottom, entry-level of the bridge. They’re selling Hope on a par with every other conventional religion. This is village hall world, and therefore, it’s baffling that it takes so much effort and money just to get to that point.
Exactly, Poet!
Mr Tiny Fists says “Uh-oh, I hope nobody sees this!!” His Ponzi scheme of rip off donations (no service in return for a donation) are extracted so whales (big donors) and clapping seals (chumps) can say they are “part” of a straight up and vertical “expansion” group. If no expansion can be shown = micro donations. Add to that some effective lawsuits = big expenses. When you add TIME to that formula: no expansion + micro donations + escalating lawsuits + time, you get oblivion.
Uh-oh is right. Smell the rotting flesh coming down the river? It’s DM and RCS just up river…
Where will the Co$ bull…t end?
Allender manages the seemingly impossible – he looks saner and happier with a goofy T-shirt and camera strapped to his head. Looks like a crowbar was used to jack up those “smiles”. Maybe they just got the latest “news” from Lauri Webster and have just unpacked their re-packed their evening wear. Oh, the fun I am missing….