Detroit Ideal Org March 2013.
The Big Lie:
David Miscavige repeats it over and over at events and in Corporate Scientology publications
“We are expanding like never before – we have opened X new churches in the last X alone.”
Here is a representative sample from the Tampa Bay Times – just one of the MANY letters over recent years that have been sent to the media. Apparently the Scientology spokespeople flunk their TR’s and have no concept how to handle any origination except to pretend it didn’t happen and talk about what they want to say – of course, that’s “Reporter TR’s”…).
This is just a small part of the letter which talks over and over about the growth proven by “new churches” in response to questions about The Hole, the culture of violence, the FBI investigation and David Miscavige’s beatings (everything is dismissed with the normal “it’s just lies from a small cadre of bitter defrocked apostates”).
For the complete letter, see here Letter from Church of Scientology to Tampa Bay Times
In the face of the Church’s continued and unprecedented growth….
Surely the Times — which claims a great interest in Scientology — is aware of the tremendous growth the Church continues to experience today. The month of June alone has seen the following Scientology Churches open their doors:
• The Church of Scientology Orange County, in Santa Ana, California on June 2, 2012.
• The rededication of the Church of Scientology Stevens Creek, in San Jose, California on June 9, 2012.
• The Church of Scientology Denver, Colorado on June 16, 2012.
• The Church of Scientology Phoenix, Arizona opening just yesterday on June 23, 2012.
A significant factor in the Church’s expansion has been the establishment of new Churches, known as Ideal Organizations.
The Truth
Typically, it is difficult to ever clearly prove the lies of David Miscavige and his spokespuppets.
But there has been a recent change in the information on Scientology.Org – the official church website. Jeff Hawkins and I had both noted in the past that the way the church website was set up there was no easy or accurate way of finding all Scientology Organizations. These days they claim 11,000 around the world, a figure closer to the total membership than the number of organizations. Of course the number is probably decreasing as the church continues to disassociate itself from any of the “groups” it so grandly takes credit for the moment they get themselves into any trouble). But for this posting, I will stick to ORGS.
Nowadays, you can find on the church website a listing of orgs and missions for each geographical region (though Australia and Russia are included under Asia?). But it is now possible to count the number of orgs in every country around the world.
Oh, how inconvenient is this for David Miscavige and his sockpuppets. Especially when he announced with great fanfare the “encyclopedia of Scientology” What Is Scientology? In 1993.
After years of “astonishing and unprecedented, straight up and vertical international expansion”, “more in the last year than in the 50 years previously”, “5 times more than has ever been experienced in history” blah blah blah de blah de blah…
Ladies and gentlemen it gives me great pleasure to announce to you tonight, that while we only counted 136 orgs planetwide in 1993, today, 20 YEARS LATER, WE HAVE THREE MORE ORGS. That’s right, we now stand at a GRAND TOTAL OF 139 ORGS PLANETWIDE!!!!! THREE CHEERS FOR DAVID MISCAVIGE!!!
The Ideal Org Scam Rolls On
The way to keep a big lie going is never to acknowledge that it may not be true. Just plow on, ignoring all facts, all doubts and all evidence to the contrary.
An utter failure in expanding Scientology (other than its real estate portfolio) by anyone’s estimation, Miscavige charges onward and upward! The same Scientology site that lists the total number of orgs also claims (they are bit out of date, but oversights like this can be forgiven when you are wrestling with growing pains brought about by opening an org every 7 years) that:
The listing below includes new properties in planning or construction stage projected to open in 2012-2013.
UNITED STATES: Albuquerque, Battle Creek, Boston, Chicago, Columbus, Detroit, Harlem, Kansas City, New Haven, Philadelphia, Portland, San Diego, San Fernando Valley, St. Louis
CANADA: Toronto, Montréal
EUROPE: Copenhagen, Budapest, Basel
LATIN AMERICA: Bogota, Las Lomas, Caracas
AFRICA: Cape Town, Durban, Port Elizabeth, Bulawayo, Harare
AUSTRALIA/NEW ZEALAND/ASIA: Sydney, Auckland, Kaohsiung
UK: Birmingham, Manchester, Plymouth, Sunderland.
Perhaps this posting will tip them off that they didn’t make a single one of these “new” orgs in 2012…
But for any sharp eyed observer, they will note that there is a NEW ORG on the horizon. Kaohsuing in Taiwan. The IAS bought this building a 8 years ago and it has been just sitting and rotting — see my earlier post here David Miscavige’s Idle Fraud – Taiwan.
Starting into the third decade since the listing in “What Is Scientology?” looks to be a monumental year with new org number 4 bringing the average time to add a new org closer to 6 years than 7 in one fell swoop. Now THAT is straight up and vertical!!!
If you live near one of these “new orgs” perhaps you could swing by and shoot in some latest pix. After all we want comply with “Command Intention” and not ignore the massive growth proven by the Ideal Org Strategy! 😐 (pie face)
See earlier related stories:
More on Miscavige Style Planetary Clearing
Birthday Game Smoke and Mirrors
by
Mike Rinder
Not sure if you had seen this 2010 CO$ document breaking down which buildings purcased by IAS v. Public. From Wilfried Handl”s sight in Austria. Thought it might help with your work.
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wilfriedhandl.com%2Fblog%2F2012%2F06%2Fdas-scientologische-paradoxon-mietruckstande-und-%25e2%2580%259eideale-org%2F
Does “management” still send out the weekly birthday game telex? It used to get posted for anyone to view, and it listed all the orgs worldwide and their standings. I remember in the mid 80’s there were 165 orgs. That is of course counting a Day and Foundation org using the same building as two orgs. I didn’t realize it shrank to 136 in ’93. Is that counting Day and Foundations separately?
Hey, you are not giving Davey enough credit.
If, say, the last really new org was opened 7 years ago and they DO open a new one this year, he can say:
MORE NEW ORGS OPENED THIS YEAR THAN THE LAST 6 YEARS COMBINED!
And if one new org has been opened in the last 7 years, then it’s 0.14 per year, so actually opening a new one in 2013 would be:
THE NUMBER OF NEW ORGS OPENED IS UP BY 700%
Davey can “get” any stat he wants. He just tells someone “it’s better be…” and guess what… that’s EXACTLY what is then reported to him. If you report less, you are an SP. If you false report, you are an SP. So every stat Davey gets comes from SPs. No wonder he is so overworked and feels so let down… How can you manage a worldwide real estate… I mean religion if all these shitfaced SPs can give you is f@%§ing lies to get you in f@%§ing trouble???
Good discussion, thanks to Mike and all who comment.
Hey Mike, I did a count of Orgs and Missions as well and I arrive at the following totals. Be aware I counted everything, including the Celebrity Centres listed under Orgs.
Number of Orgs: 153.
Number of Missions: 346
Total number of Orgs plus Missions: 499
Total number of Countries: 60 (not the 165 usually claimed)
Is the discrepancy between your total and mine due to CCs or has one of us miscounted?
I counted Class V orgs only, including CC’s but not including CLO’s, SHs, AOs, FSO, Ship, RTC, CST, CSI. No idea about Missions, again I did not count SMI Int or SMI Cont etc. The 165 (or moe) countries are counted anywhere there is a group or a book is sold…
Mike, your no BS perception and scalpal of truth is very much needed and appreciated.
I agree with Mike on the subject of “what does it matter who or what LRH actually was”. As a 40 year veteran of Scientology, I absolutely feel that Scientology saved my sanity. At least until the 1980s when Miscavige started ruining everything. If the tech wasn’t workable in spite of whatever was going on with LRH personally I wouldn’t have devoted my life to that technology. I feel doing the SHSBC and my OT levels made me a saner person. However, by the same token, NOTS and Solo NOTS after 1986 undid quite a few of those wins. It took me getting viciously attacked by the church in 2004 to differentiate between standard tech and the squirrel tech Miscavige so blatantly altered, to recognize I’d been spending thousands of dollars getting the exact technology over and over that was actually causing the problem. As someone who was continually on standard services from 1973 through the early 1980s, I say if STANDARD technology works then its something worth saving.
I remember seeing a pic of the Sydney Org all dismantled last week or the week before somewhere on Tony Ortega’s blog… so, that’s a minus one then, innit?
Lewis Clark: “given what you know about Hubbard, his morals, his motivations, and his preference for preening to research, how can any practice of Scientology not be the fruit of a poisonous tree?”
The answer is an unequivocal no. Here’s why:
We can blame Hubbard for a lot of things, but not the actions of other individuals (even if they believe they are doing it for Ron). That’s like saying the Christian who murders prostitutes is Gods’ fault. Certainly the bible does not condone the killing of hookers, yet the “true believer” will think he is carrying out God’s intention to rid the world of this filthy whores.
In the same respect, OSA and other bots ‘act out” what they believe are “Ron’s words” and justify their actions with this insane thinking. The “poison” you speak of lies in fact of misapplication and misunderstoods. Obviously many people benefited from Scientology, that’s why it grew to be the force it once was. Much like the United States was seen as the promised land by inhabitants of other countries because of its beliefs in individual freedom, so was Scientology considered to be a freedom to move forward spiritually.
And just like the US politicians have abused this power given to them by the people, and started unprovoked wars with other nations, so has Int management inside Scientology abused their power for their own ends.
Of course, Scientology is not the first “church” to do this. Human history is loaded with examples of this abuse with many different religions and organizations.
The Bible says an “eye for eye” — if I don’t believe that to be the case, and instead want to show compassion in some instances where a vengeance might be considered a better way to handle a problem by other “followers, does that mean I should discount everything recorded by Jesus in the Bible as poisonous?
Forget altogether about the CO$ and just think about LRH and whether the ‘tech’ worked for him. That is to say, if the only man in the recent history of men who was apparently able to discover and codify the tech and therefore understands it the best and therefore I expect is the one individual able to apply the tech the most effectively to positive purposes cannot show visible benefits of the tech, then surely there must be some doubt as to its workability. He is, and should be, the ‘tech’ pin-up boy… and quite frankly he isn’t doing his ‘creation’ any favours.
I have come to suspect that Indie Scientologists wish for us never-ins to believe that the benefits are all ‘internal’ and you cannot ‘see’ the benefits, they are ‘personal’, but I personally think this is an excuse because it’s clear that in many quotes LRH plainly stated physical benefits and paranormal abilities that just aren’t present in any OT so far, let alone for himself, the pin-up boy. There is a reason LRH himself exaggerated his qualifications, abilities and influence right from the outset – which have since been proven false.
And from my understanding Jesus taught ‘forgiveness’ and ‘tolerance’, not ‘revenge’… but its hard to know what he ‘really’ said about the topic as the original documents have all been subject to numerous instances of interpretation and translation during transcribing over the previous 2000 years.
I know you don’t want to ‘argue’ about it Mike, and of course you need not reply or counter, I just felt these things needed saying.
You are on the wrong blog. Evangelize somewhere else. ESMB would be more to your liking. The purpose of this blog is not to attract new people to Scientology or explain them to join, it is to awaken those who suffer abuses at the hands of the church to get some truth and wake up….
Ahh… truth… like a good cup of strong coffee. I’m definitely a fan of the truth. 😀
Luis Garcia’s law suit zeros in on the gang bang unmerciful REG cycles (Money extortion cycles) for a pretended[i] urgency [/i]for a building that never gets completed.
There is a supposed forthcoming counselling service in Scientology called “Super Power.”
This is supposed to make you ~~ you guess it ~~ A Super Powerful Human being !
The problem is that this had been promised since the late 1970s.
The flim-flam hoodwinked public get snookered in to give MORE and MORE for “Super Power” which is supposed to make such illustrious Human Beings that the whole of Civilization will be revitalized and undergo a new Renaissance !
The duped Public are made to believe, Super Power counseling and the building will be so incredulous, that the world will change for the better
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
In order to divert attention off the gruesome death of Lisa Mcpherson which rocked the Tampa Bay area and then went global, David Miscavige did a pretended “Ground breaking ceremony.”
This was 1996. We are now in 2013. There is no Super Power yet and they are still extorting visitors to Flag for more money.
Confirmed reports said $200,000 million had already been sucked out for this building that never gets finished.
In order to keep the HOAX going, another photo op was done announcing Counselors were “in training to deliver Super Power”. I sent Mike Rinder an image or 2.
Mike, good Essay, i have tweeted it.
Now hold on a second. Would it be totally invalid (tech wise) to just count each active Scientologist as a GROUP? Looking at it from that perspective, you COULD say there are TWENTY thousand active groups right now, true? Of course, officially, as each person finishes OT7 ……. but that doesn’t happen too often.
Just realized I wasn’t ambitious enough on my last post. The heck with considering each person just a “group.” Why not turn each Cl V org into a St. Hill and then each person on lines can be considered an ORG. Then you have them do a one day or two day checksheet (like we did in the old days to become a minister) that would qualify them as an IDEAL org!!! On completion, they could even go into an auditing room with a monitor which would play a little congratulatory speech by COB, maybe a cutout of the mayor of the local city could be pinned up on the wall and voila, a new Ideal Org could be opening up around the world every hour or so. Talk sbout freaking out the roof straight up and vertical EXPANSION!!! I’m kinda feeling it right now (if you know what I mean).
“Defrocked” is rather rich and relatively recent, isn’t it? I mean I followed yours and Marty’s successful attempt to derail the Lisa McPherson with dread and fascination but I never thought of you as priestly. I thought you were solidiers not penitents. So having to watch Mike a few years later brought out of the RPF and given the opportunity to trail/train Tommy was distressing.
I have a burning question: given what you know about Hubbard, his morals, his motivations, and his preference for preening to research, how can any practice of Scientology not be the fruit of a poisonous tree?
Respectfully.
I don’t think your post very respectful, but I will give you the benefit of the doubt and try to respond to your question anyway.
Your question is like asking how can you use a lightbulb when Thomas Edison was an eccentric crank? Or how can you read a book by Ernest Hemingway when he was a drunken, womanizing animal killer who committed suicide and was so “insane” he had ECT? If you experienced the usefulness of a lightbulb or are moved by the magnificence of a Hemingway novel, it would be a silly question. If you have ever experienced the relief of a Dianetics or Scientology session, or application of some principles to improve your life, you would understand its a silly question.
Hard for you to understand I am sure. But there are a LOT of people who see it this way. I don’t stand alone. And I believe everyone has the absolute right to believe what they choose, as long as that belief doesnt engender acts that harm others.
Sorry if that doesnt satisfy you. It’s the best I can do. And if you disagree, so be it. We will agree to disagree.
Mike –
I think it is clear that you are a sincere and genuine Scientologist, and that you are motivated by the highest ideals of your religious beliefs. And I definitely respect every part of that.
I was motivated by those same ideals.
I still am.
But Thomas Edison never bankrupted anyone through the sale of lightbulbs, nor did Hemingway make anyone sign billion year indentured servitude contracts to work for him for free.
There is plenty to like about Scientology.
But Scientology is not light bulbs, nor is it a Hemingway novel.
Please forgive me for saying this, but yours is not an apt comparison.
Alanzo
Alanzo — I am not going to debate this topic with you or anyone else. He posed what I thought a silly question and I tried to answer it as best I could and now you want to tell me my answer isnt acceptable to you. I didnt say Edison or Hemingway did or didnt do anything, he asked me how I could consider anything good about Scientology when I am aware of failings of Hubbard. And I didnt answer about the subject of the organization. I answered about the philosophy of Scientology. Nothing more to say here as continuing to challenge what I believe or don’t believe is a waste of anyone’s time. Clearly I believe there is good in Scientology. You and others may disagree. As I said, we can agree to disagree. I am able to think for myself. I don’t need someone else to tell me how I should think — that’s no different than what the cult tries to do….
Very well put Mike. It’s infinity valued logic and it’s an ability to think about a subject as made up of numerous parts and sequences which MAY cover the spectrum from undesirable to absolutely brilliant. That’s just a fact (and a very interesting one, and not necessarily a BAD fact) of almost every human activity that ever was and almost every great individual who ever lived. In infinity valued logic, one evaluates both the good and the bad, the conta survival and the pro survival and makes up one’s mind where the balance tips for one. As an official “SP”, I have to suffer the heartbreak of disconnection. But while i do not agree with much of Ron’s world view from the 1960s on, I do not regret my 40 year involvement in Scientology and I celebrate and put into actual practice my wins and cognitions from training and processing every day.
That’s okay Mike.
Really.
I’m not attacking your religious beliefs and I am not trying to get you to debate me on Scientology. But just for logic’s sake, I am pointing out that the comparison you made is not consistent. That is all.
I have recently had a big turnaround in my thinking about Scientology and Hubbard and even you and Marty.
So please, know that I am not attacking your beliefs, just pointing out a point of logic.
Alanzo
@Alanzo: Thomas Edison was known by those who worked for him more as a thief of ideas than as an original inventor. Almost all of the inventions that he gets credit for, were actually thought up first by someone else.
Hubbard behaved as wealthy and powerful males always have. Wives? They might trade up to a younger one. If another alpha male threatens his position, he goes into a games condition and tries to destroy them or offs them in some way. It happens everyday in corporate and business arenas if your in a position of power. You do not live in the same world as them!
Like Heff has a legion of airheads in his mansion so hubbard had a ship of girls dressed in hot pants. Granted, not appropriate today but that’s not the point. He did it because he can.
Whose more attractive? Those who get into the CMO or those who enter the TTC? Do the media handlers and marketeers for AT&T tend to look like the R&D staff? Trust me, they don’t.
As far as research goes. Edison, like Hubbard, was the research leader and put it all together. Each of these men had teams working on a specific problem. Lots of info on the web about the research at Saint Hill.
My opinion, respectfully
This is scientology org vienna (austria/europe) – down in a basement:
http://www.wilfriedhandl.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/Wien-7.jpg
The only visible “public” is a protester from anonymous.
Here another view:
http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/HsHEPrnJKUs/mqdefault.jpg
They couldn´t even pay the rent for it as you can see in the docs:
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wilfriedhandl.com%2Fblog%2F2012%2F06%2Fdas-scientologische-paradoxon-mietruckstande-und-%25e2%2580%259eideale-org%2F
Here is some good writing from Andy Porter you might like:[TONY — just to put this in context this was his diary from when the Seattle Org was forced to move into a new building in preparation for the Goodwill Games in 1990 — but things havent changed much, just gotten worse – Mike]
My in-basket is over flowing with telexes, (Telexes? What decade am I in?) which I am gleefully ignoring and their spawn: computer generated non-compliance reports.
Each day I remove them all from the in box and scan them thoroughly to see what Scientology International Management thinks I should be doing. I marvel at the stupidity of the telex orders. My Org has just moved into a new 26,000 square foot building and the rent is about $18,000 a month (our old building was 5,400 sq ft and about $6,000 a month for rent) and we have a total of 14 staff. The sane (sane used here as a relative term) thing to do is to work to attract more students and pre-clears, make sure to service them well and see that they are having big wins and so create great word of mouth, attract more students and preclears and expand the org.
But the telexes are filled with orders like making sure that LRH’s Office is properly furnished and dusted, or sorting through the enormous and completely outdated central files (which are FILLED with names and addresses of people who have long since moved and left no forwarding address…) or get an all-hands called for the staff to make them do call-in for the next majestic International Scientology Management event so we can see how Scientology is expanding like never before across the 7 continents of Earth (even Antarctica???) and how our Glorious Leader has discovered (again!) that some Suppressive Person has mis-punctuated the LRH original materials requiring a re-issue of said materials, for all to purchase.
So, I vacillate between chuckling to myself about the idiocy of the orders and disgust at the stack of non-compliance ethics reports while I, smiling now, shove all of these into my pending basket.
There! Done with my in basket for the morning! Feeling encouraged by all that hard work I get up and start to walk through the Org. My first stop is the Academy where there are a grand total of 3 students in a course room which seats 150. The course supervisor is standing near his desk carefully eye-balling the students, being extra vigilant that they don’t manifest any mis-understood word phenomena, ready to pounce at the first yawn…he looks more like a cop than someone there to help which is possibly due to my presence and the fact that he knows what’s coming next: I stand close to him and whisper in the meanest tone I can muster: “Is this the complete list of students for the entire day!!!??? You need to get more people in here!!” I try to say this in the most serious tone I can muster, mimicking those above me on the food chain, on the insane theory that if I am tough with him, that he will some how miraculously manufacture a full course room. I know, deep down in side, that this is a stupid thing to do, but brushing this decent idea aside I tell myself that he must be full of overts and withholds for his course room to be so empty.
My course room inspection done I wander off to hunt for further targets. Making my way through the labyrinth of empty corridors I head down to the Office of the LRH Communicator. The woman holding this post is one of my favorite targets for harassment. She is a kindly middle aged mom of 3 or 4 children and probably would be great at working to supervise courses for new students and using her kindness to help people. But somehow she has been sentenced to this post. Her duties are assigned from somewhere in Los Angeles, she is sent telexes (reams of telexes!) with programs for her to complete. These orders include targets like: Recruit and Post a HCO Secretary (the Executive in charge of Human Resources, Ethics and Communications), or Qualifications Secretary (in charge of seeing that the Org actually delivers a good, valuable product, and that the staff are properly trained and corrected). The idea being that IF the Org had these posts filled with competent staff the Org would deliver standard tech and be booming. But sadly these targets are beyond her ability to fill. So, in order to “get her stats up” (and stay out of trouble) she has scanned the Management Program she received and has selected more doable targets, like cleaning the Bust of LRH in his office, dusting in the bookstore and other such trivialities and she is typing up compliance reports to send to her seniors before the weeks end.
I berate her for the fact that the ORG still does not have anyone in HCO, or Qual and “bait and badger” her for her lack of confront. Again, I know I am basically being a dick, but, I also am painfully aware that if I don’t give her a good ration of shit, than I will be in line for a double heaping myself.
I leave her office with her looking even more hunted (if that’s possible) then before I come in.
Welcome to staff at a Class V Scientology Organization! Desperation, anxiety, irritation and despair are the ruling emotions. The average weekly pay check for a staff member is between $50 to $100 per week. Our work hours are supposed to be from 8am to 5pm, Monday through Friday, but we all put in many more hours, nights and weekends. Or work a second job, a real job that actually pays money so that we can eat and pay rent.
According to policy we should be productive and so well paid, and then in the evening we would be able to take courses and/or auditing ourselves. But that is not happenin’.
There is a very distinct military-like pecking order in Scientology. Those of higher rank or post are supposed to be obeyed, unquestioningly, no matter how insanely mean or stupid their orders.
Ironically one of the marketing slogans for Scientology was to “Think for Yourself”. But anyone who has been on staff for more than 15 minutes knows full well that this is definitely NOT what you’re supposed to do. The truth is that the management “style” of Scientology is to invalidate, berate, threaten and harass employees, or rather staff members. Being “unreasonable” is considered a highly valued trait. So is being ruthless. There is a policy that says the YOU will be assigned the condition that YOU fail to properly assign and enforce on others. The way this is used is that you better be mean and nasty FIRST. If you are meaner, nastier, more unreasonable and more cruel, well, great, you will do very well in the current Church of Scientology. David Miscavige (aka Fearless Leader) is the meanest, nastiest asshole of them all, hence his meteoric rise to the top.
But I digress from my Daily BattlePlan…
Feeling emboldened by my Napoleonic display of nastiness I head to the Registrars office to see about income for the week. The Reg is sitting at his desk looking at the sports page when I arrive and we small talk about the Mariners and the Cincinnati Reds. Now I am in a more respectful demeanor and I ask him about his battleplan and what income he expects to get in today. My job, as I understand it, is to put sufficient pressure on him so that he gets out there and makes money for the org. Of course he would undoubtedly do better if I wasn’t there to “product officer” him and nag him all day long but again I am myself being pushed to push others and so I mock up my best version of a serious administrator and go through the line-up for the week. I impress on him how much we need the money, reminding him of the rent that is past due and the fact that we are behind on our phone bill. All with the pretended purpose of helping him “make it go right”.
Inspections done for the moment, I head back up to my office. Knowing that what really needs to be done is to develop a sensible line for attracting new people for courses I feel a sort of anxiety, a nervous hysteria building, I feel caught between two opposing forces, having an idea of what should be done and trying to look like I am complying with the moronic orders from above…I don’t know if I am coming back to my office to hide or simply marshal my thoughts… but I see the two Sea Org Missionaries there, in my office awaiting me. They were sent to Seattle to “assist” me in getting on post and expand the Org. What they are really doing all day and night long is following me around, questioning my next step and egging me on to further stupidity and meanness.
I stride in meaningfully and explain that I was just inspecting the Org. I try to say this in a tough manner, showing that I was unreasonable in my demanding production from the staff. Apparently I put on a good show as the lead missionaire looks impressed. Feeling better now that I have shown my worth to the group by being an asshole, I take a seat and delve into detailing my daily battle plan for my prison guards, er, Missionaires….
Often I sit and wonder how the hell I ever got myself into such a fucked up mess…I started on staff in a mission many years ago, working in the public divisions, interesting new people in Scientology, giving lectures, evaluating tests and signing people up for their first services. From there I “rose up the ranks” becoming a divisional director and then, after completing more management courses decided that I could do better at running the place than the current director and soon was the boss, or rather Mission Holder. From there I received more management training, completing the OEC course and started to feel that I could boom any scientology organization (it says right there, in the course, that if I complete the course that I could boom ANY organization…).
Scientology had just sponsored its first sporting event, the Indy 500. It didn’t end so well for the Church, the driver they sponsored, Roberto Guerrero, crashed on the first lap and was out of the race with his Dianetics Emblazoned car …but hey, it was a start. The Good Will games were coming to Seattle next year and I dreamed of the church sponsoring the event and the resultant influx of thousands, or tens of thousands, of eager people into the church…
I dutifully telexed my seniors in LA about the idea, went to events designed to expand the Org and was soon recruited to leave the Mission and take over the Seattle Org to get it ready for the Games, which church management had now decided to sponsor. I let my ego take over my thinking and agreed to run the Org. So I don’t really have anyone to blame for my sorry state beside myself.
This realization does little to improve my mood.
With the Missionaires out of my hair for the moment I now retrieve all of the telexes from my pending box and quickly place them all in the Out Box. I am having a productive day so far…
I spend the next part of the afternoon downstairs in the Division 6 area, doing a few test evaluations. The Org moved into this monstrosity of a building on the hopes that the Good Will games would boom the Org. but this has not happened at all. It turned out that at best the GW Games were a sort of PR action for the Church, really only useful as a way of getting our name out, and associating Dianetics with other large corporate sponsors. Not only did we rent the new space, (for $18,000 a month) but we filled the building with rented furniture and purchased a new phone system and awning for the front entrance with credit. To top it off the New Org is located some 15 minutes from the city center, where there is little body traffic. So, when the Sea Org Missionaires arrived they noticed this oversight and ordered us to rent another new building downtown to be used as a testing center.
This new building was also furnished with credit and set up to operate, the only small oversight here being that there were NO staff to work in it!
To remedy this more Sea Org staff from LA were flown in to man the new test center and the pressure was ratcheted up on me to recruit more staff to work there. I managed to recruit 3 more new people, all with little experience in dealing with new public, and the results were not very promising.
At about 6pm I head back upstairs to “debrief”. My evening meeting with the Missionaires does not go well. They start by demanding to know what my production was that day. I don’t have much to report that’s actually done. So they start in by telling me that I need to be more assertive and try to “pull strings” to see what is distracting me. I don’t have the guts to tell them to fuck off, or that THEY are distracting me, or that their incessant orders and hounding me only make it all worse. So I sit and endure their efforts to berate and belittle me (all in the name of “baiting and badgering”) and act contrite.
Now its time to go off post, I am scheduled to work until 6pm and there is another entire staff, the “Foundation” staff arriving now to take over. But the Missionaires have different ideas. As Sea Org Members they are well trained in how to Make it Go Right and Being Unreasonable and all other forms of Dickdom and so they make it clear that I cannot go home or study because there is more work to do.
Instead I am urged to find more victims, er, people to recruit for staff. Another fun aspect of the Church of Scientology is the way that anyone who is below you on the food chain is regarded as some lower life form of out-ethics scum. If you’re on staff, then anyone NOT on staff is a lazy asshole. If you’re in the Sea Org, then anyone on staff in an Org or Mission is some sort of fuck up. And if you’re in Management, then they are all cretins, those below you.
So, I sit and review a list of all the people I know who are into Scientology, who know how bad things are here on Planet Earth, who KNOW that Scientology is the ONLY way out of the mess and who are not is so deep of debt as to prevent them from working full-time for next to nothing.
I have learned that passion is what works on recruit cycles, that and the old saying about how misery loves company. I have managed to recruit onto staff, here at the Seattle Org about 8 or so people. Many are close friends of mine. Some are new acquaintances. All of them I helped convince that there was no better use of their time, of their entire life, than working for the Church of Scientology.
Even after all these years I still cringe when considering how I convinced these people to give up their dreams and join staff.
And so my tenure as the Seattle Org ED followed its missile-like trajectory, quickly up, up and up… then a complete crash. I endured about a year of this, amassing a lifetime of overts and motivators not to mention a mountain of debt. My pay was not sufficient to pay my rent or bills. In the recent past I had lent money to scientology public so that they could buy scientology auditing. Each month they paid me back, all money which was owed on my credit cards. What I should have done was to use this money they were paying back to pay the credit cards, but instead I used the money to buy food, buy gas and pay rent. So now I was in about $30,000 of debt.
I hated my post, hated being on staff in the Org and wanted out. My stats were down and I hoped that Management would realize what an incompetent executive I was and remove me. And this was partly true, the management did consider me a loser, but not enough to remove me! Once I realized I would be here, on the post basically forever I decided to act. I got some money and flew to Los Angeles and went into the CLO (management office) and told them that I wanted to route off staff. I explained that I was too much in debt, that I was a poor administrator and that they could do better than me. Some young Sea Org Officer was assigned to handle me. He told me to follow him to the staff canteen and while we walked he explained to me that I needed to stay on staff, that only a real pussy would bail out, that I’d be betraying the group and on and on…we arrived to the canteen and he got himself a 32 ounce coffee and proceeded to lay into me about wanting to route off staff.
He was a real dick and at this point I was strong in spirit and I told him that despite his opinions I still planned to route off staff. Now he started to get more agitated, surprised that I would possibly think to disagree with him. He jerked his arms and spilled his coffee all over his white uniform. Looking at me with a sneer he said that I made him spill the coffee because I had an evil counter-intention, that I had suppressed him.
This made me smirk all the more and he stopped being “nice” and we went back to the office where I was assigned to work on building renovations 16 hours a day until I came to my senses.
The story from here is long, convoluted and painful: Blowing the Scientology Base and starting to hitchhike back home, returning to Los Angeles in the middle of the night, being threatened with declare as a Suppressive Person for having left, and finally finagling a way to get off staff at the Org…
But returning now to my evening on post at the Seattle Org…I made phone calls to try and schedule some appointments with prospects for recruiting for staff. This didn’t last long, no one answered their phone, and so I was off, back to the Registrars Office. All I wanted to do was to go home and relax a little, try to gather myself and my thoughts, sort out my head and get a grip on how to make this mess better. But instead I am aimlessly cycling through the 26,000 sq. foot monster, checking in with staff here, torturing other poor souls there and generally trying to escape the notice and wrath of the Missionaires.
The last thing I do before “securing for the night” is to head back to my office, take all those fucking telexes and computer generated non-compliance reports and throw them all away in the garbage can. At least I got one fucking thing done today…
Finally I make it out and home by midnight. I don’t feel any sense of accomplishment other than a slight lessening of stress from having escaped the building. The fresh air reminds me that there is another universe, out side of this madness.
I smile, knowing deep inside, that someday I will be free of all this…
——————————————————————————–
Wow. If life on org staff was that bad in 1990, can you imagine how bad it must be now? Makes me wish that I’d taken the time to keep a diary of the craziness that went on while I was on staff in renos.
Thanks for sharing, Tony. That’s the sort of post that really brings the insanity of life in the church into three-d.
Great story! I must have just missed you. I started my Scientology career in Seattle in 1991.
Hey I went Clear…
Sorry I missed you! We could have had fun suppressing, er, helping each other!!!! What posts did you have there, at the org?
I was on staff on Austin Fdn org from 1975-1985. Until 1980, Austin org was located in an old fraternity house in a residential area near the University of Texas.
I remember a staff meeting in 1978 when it was announced that both Day and Foundation org had over 100 staff each. Indeed the building was packed with staff. It was really packed when public tried to get in.
People rented apartments around the org so as to have a place to audit. There were several people doing internships in qual. So lots of auditing was happening.
It was not uncommon for someone to have big wins on the com course or HQS course and then bring in several of their family to do courses.
There were lots of UT students involved with the org and also local business people. I remember an English professor doing levels training and UT’s best football player on the com course. I was worried that we would not do a good job with him, because he was the big man on campus. He wrote a great sucess story, but didn’t resign because he was moving to Baltimore to play for the Colts.
Austin org was run locally by local OT’s (original OT prior to NOTS) who were OEC grads or Class 5 or 6
auditors. Mission holders were held in very high esteem since most of them were OT’s and Class 5 or 6 auditors and they were a major source of people coming to the org.
In 1980, it was announced that Flag had purchased a new building for Austin Org for 2 million dollars.
Did you get that. Flag just bought it. There was no fund raising!
Our jobs as staff was to carry out the move without disrupting production. We had some big all hands for while, but it went off pretty well.
The new building was located right across the street from UT. I’d say it is the most ideal location possible in Austin. Also, it was an outstanding investment in real estate. Foot traffic is awesome.
For a while Austin org was really rocking, with a strong emphasis on Div 6.
It was a very winning place. I loved being a staff member then. I remember walking out of the org and noticing that the city was really dead and realizing it’s 3 AM, no wonder. We were having so much fun,we lost track of the time.
Then came new management around 1982/83 and Scientology became a deadly serious activity. We also found that those OT’s who were running the org were in fact SP’s who were really subverting Scientology. One of the SP’s was the HCO Sec who recruited me and also got Ast Fdn over 100 staff.
My latter years on staff became a drudgery like Tony described an I enventually routed off.
Sad story.
Hopefully that can be recreated.
By the way, that was Andy Porters story. I just posted it.
🙂
Sounds like my time on staff at Wash DC. 80-82. Now reading your story makes me wonder why I hung around so long. I was able to re-live and blow some charge from my time on staff while reading your story. Thanks for that. You helped me look at the insanity from an exterior viewpoint. What the hell was wrong with me? Why did I put up with all the violations of LRH? I wonder if we as thetans actually like traps? Maybe that is how we got into this mess in the first place.
Joe, Of course I have asked myself that same question many, many times. Certainly Family and the threat of disconnection were part of the glue, the urge to curry favor with higher-ups was a part. Then there is/was the threat of “never being able to go up the bridge”. As for me, the rest was just my propensity to make excuses for how bad it all was, and hope beyond hope that it would change. And I admit to the crazy idea that somehow I could help change it all…
Thank you Mike, this gives real accurate picture of the scene and I may be able to get you some photos of one of this “New Orgs”. By the way, in reading Pow’s repsonse to the time I could not miss the lack of ARC in her write up and a very covert tone level, in despair (even if not admited). Now, back to the write up, thank you was great insight and I will disseminate this data.
Silvia
Mike of of your next article ?
After the poor OT Pianist now here the poor Actress:
http://www.gofundme.com/2b7alc
How sad
Roger, let’s be respectful to the financially poor and also to anyone battling cancer like this. They deserve respect if they have the courage to battle cancer.
Dog, I don’t see anything uncompassionate in Roger’s post. He said “sad”, which it is. I will probably send a small donation to Karen, for old-times’ sake.
I have great respect for them, but they have given so much money to the Church and when they need help from the church community they have to ask others ! That’s what sad !
Also I found an interesting article regarding “religious Trama syndrome” and mental health problems that you might find interesting.
http://www.alternet.org/belief/religious-trauma-syndrome-how-some-organized-religion-leads-mental-health-problems?akid=10240.243298.wPSUkv&rd=1&src=newsletter814863&t=4&paging=off
I live in southeast Florida between Miami and Ft. lauderdale. I will check out what is in my area (I believe there is an org in Miami) and see if I can swing by and get some pix. If you know offhand of anything in the Ft. lauderdale area let me know.
Sidney — the nearest org is Miami. The Scientology website reports a Mission at 660 South Federal Highway Suite, #200
Pompano Beach, FL 33062. Maybe checking in on them would be interesting….
It sounds more like Straight up and vertigo.
For sale: Aamsterdam org 😛
http://www.amsterdam.org
Oops. Minus a
The HES of Basel Org announced about 2 months ago in Swiss TV, that Basel Ideal Org will open in May this year, but the building is empty and has no sign of life !
This building is located at the fringes of the City, just at the border to France. From the 2,3, and 4th Floor Students and Pc’s will have a nice overview (located about 3-400m away) over one of the biggest psychiatric compound in Europe ( about 1 square KM) and the people doing the purif can jog in the nice parcs of the the psychiatric clinics there and can do obnosis drills on the patients of the clinics. perhaps they want to take over the clinics ? 🙂
Roger-do you have an address for the new Basel org? I’ll drive by and take a picture
Burgfelderstrasse 211. When you stand in front of the buildings iit’s the right block !
Who are you ?
I’ve been reading the blog for a long time. But I haven’t posted yet. Years ago I donated money for that very “ideal” org, but in almost 15 years it’s still not built 😉
Sorry-Marty’s blog…I’m sure you know what I mean:)
Mike, exactly the point. They are not creating “new” orgs, just recycling the old ones. To be a Scientologist requires, as Orwell put it, “an unending series of victories over your own memory.” Take Portland Oregon, where I am. The 1998 edition of What is Scientology lists two Orgs in Portland, the “Church of Scientology of Portland” and the “Portland Celebrity Center.” Now there is only one org in Portland. So where did the other one go? To be a good Scientologist, one would have to forget that second org ever existed. Same with CC London. Same with the old “Copenhagen Org” and who knows how many others. Now they will announce Portland as another “new Org.” And the good Scientologist will say “isn’t it wonderful that we are creating all these new orgs” – conveniently forgetting that they already existed. Another victory over memory.
Thanks Jeff. Your input is always most welcome. I was going to go through and list out where the news orgs were and which ones had CLOSED, but I thought I might save that for a post on its own down the road a bit as it is a well known fact that this is a Suppressive Act according to the policy the church espouses to so rigorously follow….BTW CC London still exists.
Add CC Las Vegas and Dallas to the list.
To be a Scientologist requires, as Orwell put it, “an unending series of victories over your own memory.”
– Jefferson Hawkins, 2013
I’ll snap a pic of the existing Albuquerque org next time I am nearby — their existing building is a tiny store front that NEVER has more than 3 cars parked at it. Very dismal.
Oh and their new building is downtown right next door to all of the bars and clubs… Should be interesting.
Thanks Laura. Looking forward to the shots. I am getting a collection of pix of orgs around the world now. Maybe I will make a page to complement the church glamor shots of empty “Idea Orgs” — with shots of “The Rest” and the “Unopened ‘Ideal Orgs To Come'”
Keeps those cards and letters coming folks!!
I suppose sending Div6ers into the clubs with roofies could count as body routing. Hey, when they wake up they can sell them a purif!