The World of the Day Before Yesterday– Now With Fedoras
Note: due to the sudden uptick in comments for this post, I’ve bumped it up to the top of the page.
At the library yesterday we received a donation of DVDs from Bridge Publications Inc. the publishing arm of the Church of Scientology. We regularly receive unsolicited donations from publishers but as these DVDs were lectures by L. Ron Hubbard on Scientology, I was intrigued.
Now, Tom Cruise and his nutty ass aside, Scientology has got to be the single weirdest pyramid scheme mistaken for a cult, masquerading as a religion out there, and that’s taking into account the Church of Latter Day Saints and their Mormon Underwear.
What’s really fascinating is not just how blatant the Church of Scientology is about being so totally made up but how many people still join, thinking that they will somehow find joy and happiness and completion in the half baked proselytizing of some hack science fiction Author. I guess there are an awful lot of Star Fuckers out there who think that if they have a really good audit and become an Operating Thetan that they’ll get to meet Tom Cruise, his zombie wife and their soon-to-be super fucked up baby.
But that’s not the interesting part. What is fascinating is the hokey Space Opera that plays a large role in the basic scripture of Scientology. Wikipedia gives us a run down of the highlights. My favorite is this part:
The Marcab Confederacy is said to be one of the most powerful galactic civilizations still active. He describes it as:
various planets united into a very vast civilization which has come forward up through the last 200,000 years, formed out of the fragments of earlier civilizations. In the last 10,000 years they have gone on with a sort of decadent kicked-in-the-head civilization that contains automobiles, business suits, fedora hats, telephones, spaceships — a civilization which looks almost an exact duplicate but is worse off than the current US civilization.
(”Auditing Comm Cycles”)The capital of the Confederacy is said to be “one of the tail stars of the Big Dipper“, probably Alkaid, a star 108 light years distant from Earth. The Marcabians used to rule Earth at some point in the past but lost control of it due to “losses in war and other things”.
The Marcabians had an oppressive political system: “if [a person] was considered to be in contempt of court or anything like that, [he was] simply fried since there was a curtain of radioactive material which went clear across the front of the bench anywhere that a witness or anybody would stand, and so on.” (”History and development of processes: question and answer period”) They invented income tax as a means of punishment, with the death penalty imposed for making even the slightest mistake in returns — “one comma wrong and it’s ‘dead forever’.” The Marcabians also appear to have been distinctly socialistic, having “had plan balanced economies” (presumably some form of planned economy). (”E-Meter Actions, Errors in Auditing”)
They were also keen on motor racing and every once in a while Scientologists undergoing auditing “will run into [memories of] race tracks and race-track drivers”. Hubbard described this in some detail in a 1960 lecture:
They had turbine-generated cars that went about 275 miles an hour (443 km/h). They ran with a high whine. I notice they’ve just now invented the motor again. And they had tracks that were booby-trapped with atom bombs, and they had side bypasses. The tracks were mined, and the grandstands were leaded-paned.
(”Create and Confront”)The tracks were deliberately designed to be as dangerous as possible, with “a mountain that you went up to the top of and fell off”, and death was commonplace. This, however, was not a problem, as Marcabian medicine was so good that nobody ever died permanently. According to author Russell Miller, Hubbard liked to reminisce to his followers about “how he was a race-car driver in the Marcab civilization”. One of the people who accompanied him aboard his private fleet in the late 1960s described Hubbard’s stories of life with the Marcabians:
LRH said he was a race driver called the Green Dragon who set a speed record before he was killed in an accident. He came back in another lifetime as the Red Devil and beat his own record, then came back and did it again as the Blue Streak. Finally he realized all he was doing was breaking his own records and it was no game any more.
(Miller, p.280)Hubbard describes exactly this in his lecture “Create and Confront”, telling how he went through multiple lives as a Marcabian racing driver with names like The Green Rocket, The Red Comet, The Silver Streak, The Gold Bomb, and so on.
Hubbard stated that the Marcab Confederacy was now using Earth as a “prison planet”. When a person dies or “drops the body”, as Scientologists put it, his thetan is pulled into a Marcab-established “implant station” or “report station”. The idea that Earth is a “prison planet”, maintained by “entheta beings” or Targs who dumped their enemies on Earth, was first put forward in a 1952 lecture, “Electropsychometric Scouting: Battle of the Universes”. A steady flow of flying saucers is said to be still dropping off more entheta beings.
The report area for most has been Mars. Some women report to stations elsewhere in the Solar System. There are occasional incidents about Earth report stations. The report stations are protected by screens. The last report station on Earth was established in the Pyrenees.
(Scientology: A History of Man)The thetans are brainwashed and sent back to Earth, where they find a new body to inhabit. Only Scientologists who have reached the level of “Operating Thetan” are said to be able to avoid this fate.
[…] Hubbard mentions a number of other alien civilizations in his writings, though he does not go into any detail about them. These include the “Three-and-a-half Invaders, … the Psi Galaxy, Galaxy 82.” (”The Story of a Static”) According to the official Church of Scientology notes accompanying the lectures in which he alluded to them, these were “made up” (presumably for humorous effect), contrasting with the supposedly real invader forces and civilizations cited above.
I love that last part. He just made up some shit to throw people off. Ya think?
But there are some very telling details to this elaborate story. Most notable (beyond the ridiculous time scales—Xenu apparently ruled this quadrant of the Galaxy for 2 Trillion Years) is how this advanced civilization that had beat death, liked racing cars and setting off random nukes, was just like the US in the 1950’s, only they were all evil Socialists who killed the inherently good natured and capitalistic Thetans for sport and their technology was just like ours (down to even flying through space in Douglas DC-8s).
What’s telling about all this is that it emphasizes just what an unimaginative hack Hubbard was as a sci-fi author. He couldn’t conceive of a 200,000 year old space faring civilization that was any more advanced than the US at the height of the Cold War. Did they speak English and watch Leave it to Beaver as well? Take two hour long, four Martinni lunches? Chase their secretaries around the office making lascivious faces? Enjoy a tight crew cut?
Maybe back in the fifties and sixties when Hubbard made this stuff up it sounded sci-fi and futuristic but fifty years on, it creeks like a badly made B-movie, complete with rubber aliens, technobabble and cardboard flying saucers.
It would be amusing if it weren’t for the thousands of people all over the world who fall prey to this nonsense. Bellow the silly Space Opera and gibberish about Thetans is an organization that takes in millions of dollars from people who are just looking for answers in a weird and confusing world, exploiting them and encouraging cult-like behavior, just to make a buck.
Operation Clambake is an organization dedicated to exposing this fraud. Drop on by and let them know they aren’t alone, that Tom Cruise and the crazy science Fiction writer he worships aren’t going to win. A few trillion years form now, people will ask what was Scientology all about and will be able to snicker and laugh, they way w do now about other religions that have fallen out of fashion, like the cult of Mithra or Christianity.
January 19th, 2007 at 9:33 pm
“Operation Clambake” is not “dedicated” to anything other than profiting from seeding anti-Scientology sentiment. This is a group of disgruntled ex-members who have a huge axe to grind. They’re like an ex-wife who’s still bitching at the ex-husband. They should get a freaking life.
It’s a real shame that you legitimize their foaming-at-the-mouth hatred againt a philosophic movement.
In terms of Scientology, heck, ok, it ain’t your cup of joe. I get it. So, DON’T JOIN.
But don’t go making us into kooks. First of all, you clearly don’t understand that all this is just research into subjective past-life recall. It is a collection of commonalities that emerged from past-life recall sessions. We do not accept them as blind truth. We consider them interesting commentary, and perhaps useful to the practitioner.
But whatever. While there are religions out there believing in angels and demons, burning bushes and people walking on water, water turning into wine and God landing on a mountain, making fun of Scientology is a bit bitchy at best.
best,
Greg
Scientologist and proud of it
http://www.liveandgrow.org
January 21st, 2007 at 4:11 pm
Thanks for the comments, Greg.
First off, a cursory glance at my blog will tell you that I’m not singling Scientology out for criticism. I’m against all religions, equally. I think filling people’s heads with nonsense, be it fairy tales about magical carpenters, burning bushes or past lives as aliens is not just a matter of subjective experience that you can disagree about. It’s fucking dangerous. It’s dangerous.
9/11 wasn’t a video game or a movie. It was religious nuts with a head full of nonsense willing to kill those who didn’t agree with them.
Your brand of hokum may not be as immediately life threatening as radical Islam but those above you in your little pyramid scam are using the money they conned out of you to coerce politicians and hush journalists and former members, like those in Operation Clambake who are trying to expose the fraud and emotional damage that can result from believing in the rambling non sense of a hack sci-fi author with a grudge against science and common sense.
So don’t expect me or anyone else to cut you some slack. You’re actively hurting people with the bullshit you believe.
January 28th, 2007 at 8:48 pm
Operation Clambake is a critic site Greg. Its also very upfront about that and yet still invites any member of scientology to post. And some do.
What about scientology’s Religous Freedom Watch site, which claims to be for all faiths yet all the people slammed are critics of scientology. Are you telling me that other faiths don’t have people against them that should be on the site? Or is the truth simply that scientology is using other faiths to try to destory anyone who dares to speak out against them.
And what of the Cleveland Street Safety League site, which claims to want to keep people in the area safe. Yet the only person they warn everyone about is a flim maker who is a critic of scientology, leaving out the 10 sex offenders in the area.
At least xenu.net is open on how it feels and even is fair enough to let all sides be heard. Why doesn’t scientology do the same thing?
January 28th, 2007 at 9:35 pm
Greg is being disingenouos, a common trait of those to proud to
recognize scientology for what it is.
Heck, if we are going to chip away at the white-wash that scientology
uses to make itself look like a sci-fi religion, we might as well expand
on the fourth and fifth invader forces, and the endless “space opera”
stuff LRH used as dunnage. There is a lot more where that came from.
And there is not one scientologists that has show any recall of past
“space opera” technology worthy of a technology transfer or a major
advance in real science.
But such exposure, while of public good, would still not cover all the
brainwashing and fraud perpetrated by the “chuch” upon it’s members,
that still remains the largest tragedy of all.
Z
January 28th, 2007 at 9:45 pm
“First of all, you clearly don’t understand that all this is just research into subjective past-life recall. It is a collection of commonalities that emerged from past-life recall sessions. We do not accept them as blind truth. We consider them interesting commentary, and perhaps useful to the practitioner.”
The statements of LRH about the history of Thetans and how they came to be on Earth are simply subjective past-life recall? Are people advised of that when the secrets of OT III are revealed to them? I’m curious to know how much else LRH said is simply “interesting commentary.”
January 29th, 2007 at 6:34 am
Wow Greg, it’s a rather well known fact that Clambake is run and financed by one man who recieves no money nor gratuities. There is a notice on Clambake inviting any and all scientologists to point out what is innaccurate on Xenu.net and it would be altered accordingly. So why hasnt a scientologist pointed out erroneous information for it to be corrected I wonder.
Come on Greg, the uber seekrit skriptures are a factual account of whole track recall and it even says so in History of Man
OOPS! Trying to align hubbards factual accounts with other religions to try make LRH’s created religion legitimate.
What was in the letter to Helen O’Brien in 1953 from Ron? OH!! Why he was going to pursue the “religion angle” after his dianeticists association went bust.
Nice blog BTW, I found it quite amusing, but when I then think of all those hurt in years gone by and those hurting now at the behest of $cientology, I laugh no longer :’-(
January 29th, 2007 at 9:56 am
Greg, you say these are “collection of commonalities that emerged from past-life recall sessions”. and that you “do not accept them as blind truth.”
Wel tehn, why does the official scientology site states that the “Space opera” aspect of its doctrine is fact, not fiction?
Here is the “space opera” definition from scientology’s own website:
“space opera: of or relating to time periods on the whole track millions of years ago which concerned activities in this and other galaxies. Space opera has space travel, spaceships, spacemen, intergalactic travel, wars, conflicts, other beings, civilizations and societies, and other planets and galaxies. It is not fiction and concerns actual incidents and things that occurred on the track. ”
http://www.scientology.org/p_jpg/wis/wiseng/gloss.htm
So that would be “not fiction and concerns actual incidents and things that occurred on the track.”
Why are you not upfront about this Greg?
January 29th, 2007 at 6:25 pm
It should be strange to hear Greg claiming that anything ‘Ron’ said was only ‘interesting commentary’, since to suggest any such thing is a ‘High Crime’ in Scientology.
Literally. The crime is called ‘Tech Degrade’ and consists of any implication or hint that *anything* L. Ron Hubbard ever said was meant *any* other way than the stark, unmitigated and literal way He said it.
For those interested in researching this, all that’s necessary is to ‘google’ Keeping Scientology Working or reading the introduction to ‘The History of Man’ (one of the more amusing Scientology tomes, and, not ‘confidential’.
Of course, and, I’m kind of assuming Greg’s a Scientologist, there’s a reason he’s committing this ‘High Crime’, and, he’s probably got a dispensation.
He’s practicing ‘acceptable truth’ (look it up.)
The rest of his whine isn’t even up to *that* standard, since he’s seriously suggesting that http://www.xenu.net , which is run by Andreas Heldal Lund, who was *never* a Scientologist, is run by pouting ‘ex-Scientologists’ for money
Yeah, right, Greg.
Joe Lynn
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