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Claire Headley on Scientology’s Feats of Clay — ALSO: Geir Isene on Wikipedia

ClayDemo2Claire Headley is taking us on our journey to train as Scientologists. She and her husband Marc were Sea Org workers who escaped from Scientology’s International Base in 2005. She spent years working with Scientology’s “tech,” and was trusted to oversee the auditing of Tom Cruise. Go here to see the first part in this series.

Claire, last time we learned about how much Scientology learning is often repetitive. How about this week?

CLAIRE: More of the same, I’m afraid.

By this point, you’re a Fast Flow student (having completed Student Hat and Method One Word Clearing, which we’ve already covered). The next step to becoming a trained auditor is the Professional TRs course.

We’ve covered the TRs in some detail already.

THE BUNKER And how. This feels like our third time through Scientology’s staring contests.

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CLAIRE: Well, on the Pro TRs course, you get to study in detail the key materials where Hubbard talks about communication and its components.

The main thing I remember hearing about it prior to actually doing the course was “the wall of clay” — where you have to do a clay demo (demonstration) of every single paragraph of Chapter 7 of Dianetics 55!, “Communication.”

This always struck me as odd.

THE BUNKER: You’re telling us.

Up_The_BridgeCLAIRE: What I mean is, when you do a clay demo, you’re required to demonstrate in clay an exact concept. You’re not allowed to do “descriptive labeling” of your clay demos. For example, if I were to do a clay demo of someone playing basketball, I would label the figure “man,” not “basketball player.” I would then write a label of what my clay demo was supposed to represent (a man playing basketball) and place it face down. So when someone came to give me a checkout, they would have to guess that this was a clay demo of a man playing basketball for me to pass. Well, that gets tough when you’re clay demoing full paragraphs from a book.

THE BUNKER We’d rather play basketball than convey it in clay.

CLAIRE: Don’t get me wrong, I think communication is a really important life skill. I’m just not of the view that this was the most effective or helpful way to learn that skill.

Once you make it through the “wall of clay” it’s back to the Training Routines, the TRs.

You watch the film Professional TRs numerous times. This was filmed in the 1970s with Hubbard directing. Dan Koon and Bob Waldman (known as Waldo at the Int base) were the stars of the film. The main premise of the film is that TRs are the first step to becoming a flawless auditor.

This time you have to do OT TR 0 (with eyes shut) to a two hour pass. Meaning you have to sit there perfectly for two hours with your eyes closed.

THE BUNKER: That is a great life skill.

CLAIRE: Same for TR 0 (staring at another person). You have to do this perfectly, for hours on end until you are able to do two full hours to a pass. There used to be a requirement to do TR 0 for two hours without blinking, but that was in the 1970s and was cancelled. Nonetheless, excessive eye blinking is a flunk. This may sound simple. But people end up on OT TR 0 and TR 0 for hundreds of hours sometimes.

Then you continue on through the TRs to TR 4, and in order to complete the course, you are required to get a video pass of flawless TR 4.

Anyone who had completed Pro TRs prior to the Golden Age of Tech release in May 1996 was required to redo the course and get a video pass all over again. I finished Pro TRs the first time in mid 1989 at Valley org in North Hollywood.

The EP (end phenomena) of the course is that you should be able to handle any communication situation in life no matter how tough. And that you should be able to handle any session situation with TRs alone.

For me, this translated as follows: When I was being hounded and hounded by Sea Org recruiters to join the Sea Organization shortly after finishing this course (at age 14) I was feeling pressured and backed into a corner to join dthe Sea Org.

So one day I asked my mom and dad to help me get the recruiters to back off.

Their response?

Well of course, since I was a “product” of the Pro TRs course and thus should be able to deal with any communication situation in life, I needed to deal with it myself.

THE BUNKER: So heartwarming.

According to a 2001 price list, the Pro TRs course is $3,500. Our total so far: $14,197.

 
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Geir Isene: Spying on Andreas Heldal-Lund and Trying to Sway Wikipedia

In a previous video interview, Norwegian former Scientologist Geir Isene dropped a couple of bombs about the church’s disastrous relationship with the Internet and with Google. This week, in the latest video from Karen de la Carriere and J. Swift, Isene talks about working as a Scientology spy to try and dig up dirt about Xenu.net owner (and fellow Norwegian) Andreas Heldal-Lund.

Geir also talks about how he tried to convince Scientology to soften up Wikipedia, which had banned the church from editing pages about itself.

 

 
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Posted by Tony Ortega on July 2, 2013 at 07:00

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