Andres! It’s time to take your final bow! Today we have the last section of the lengthy, secretly-recorded briefing that Scientology Sea Org official Andres Rodriguez gave to a gathering of Scientologists at an org recently somewhere in the United States.
This is our sixth and final portion of the recording of Rodriguez. (Previous sections can be found here: First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth.) He’s also notable because he was married at one time to Jessica Feshbach, who became notorious as the aggressive “handler” of actress Katie Holmes during her first years married to Tom Cruise. Jessica is now married to former Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis, and they are no longer in Scientology’s elite Sea Org.
Rodriguez is the Senior Case Supervisor West US, which means he oversees the delivery of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s “technology” for half the country. But as we’ve seen, his description of that technology is not familiar to oldtime Scientologists who have left the church.
Former Sea Org member Chris Shelton has been helping us break down the jargon-filled statements made by Rodriguez. And in this final segment, Chris delivers another great analysis of what we can deduce about the current state of Scientology under leader David Miscavige.
First, give the recording a listen and follow along with our captions. Then Chris has a brief glossary before he gives another great explanation of what you’re hearing.
Chris had just a couple of glossary items this time to add to what he’s defined earlier…
BTBs: Board Technical Bulletin – a type of written issue that used to exist in Scientology which was not written by Hubbard but which described how to do Scientology technical procedures. BTBs were all eventually cancelled because they didn’t have Hubbard’s name on them, even though much of the data in them was re-issued later with Hubbard’s name on it.
Power and Power Plus: Two steps a person takes on the Scientology Grade Chart, done only if a person does not go Clear on New Era Dianetics. Most preclears do go Clear on NED, so it’s not common to do Power and Power Plus.
Chris sent us another great analysis of what we’re hearing in this recorded segment. Here’s what he sent us…
This is the final article on this briefing from Andres Rodriguez, Senior C/S West US and one of the most highly trained and most regarded technical personnel in the Sea Org. It’s been my pleasure to write my feedback on this and I’m grateful for the positive comments and generally good reception these have received.
This briefing has given us an incredibly special and rare look at what the day-to-day Scientologist is interested in and how they are kept indoctrinated in the cult mindset. For this final section, I wanted to highlight some of the more important aspects of what Andres is talking about and wrap this up with what I feel is the single most important lesson to be learned from this.
There have been many insightful and humorous comments made by Bunkerites during this series of articles. Many have made fun of Andres’ horrible accent and his creative vocabulary choices. It’s difficult to listen to him rambling on and frustrating to plod through all the Scieno-speak. I understand, as I had to listen to this thing over and over again a few times and it was sometimes maddening. While much of what has been said by readers here is spot-on, what I don’t think has been as carefully observed is the amazing insight this briefing gives into the actual mindset of a regular Scientologist.
Non-Scientologists ask all the time “How can anyone fall for this?” and “What are these people thinking?” A routine comment I have gotten in response to many of my videos is along the lines of “You’d have to be a moron to join Scientology.” Well, this briefing actually answers those questions quite well and I think also shows clearly that while Scientologists are quite deluded and some are even being driven mad by the “standard” practice of Scientology, these people are not stupid.
What Scientologists lack is not intelligence or higher education. They lack critical thinking skills and thus are in a position to fall for some of the most ridiculous pseudo-scientific nonsense to ever be offered up anywhere. I wish this sort of thing was limited only to Scientology, but unfortunately our brains are actually wired to fall for this and you see it happening all the time with much more than just tiny destructive cults like Scientology.
To start with, in this last section, the lies and magical thinking that pervade Scientology are demonstrated in the story Andres sells the public about how all the “garbage” about Scientology in the media is actually driving people to join Scientology more than ever before. It’s interesting how the way these stories are told in the bubble world, they always happen somewhere else, at some other org. Yet Scientologists never question them or stop and wonder why these things never seem to happen in their own local areas. Their orgs stand empty as failed testaments to the “Ideal Org strategy” yet they are so sure that it’s just booming like crazy everywhere else. It’s all “straight up and vertical” everywhere but here, and of course the only reason for that is because we here are not dedicated or “on-Source” enough and have to work harder and pay more.
Andres then goes on to reassure them that the “bad effect is not happening” and he is able to deliver this to these public and staff as though he knows what he’s talking about, when he is in the least knowledgeable position of anyone in that room to evaluate what is or isn’t happening with Scientology in the big wide world. Andres is a cloistered Sea Org member who literally has no access to the Internet or any regular “wog” media, nor does he ever care to look at any of it. The entirety of his knowledge about what is in the media is contained in what he sees written down in session worksheets and Knowledge Reports in preclear folders that go across his desk. Yet he stands there with his trumped-up authority, reassuring his flock from a position of total ignorance that not only is all well in the world of Scientology but that things have never been better. He believes this drivel because he has to, otherwise he would not be able to keep doing what he does. Yet there sits every org he goes to, totally devoid of any new public and fewer and fewer active Scientologists coming on course or going in session. The cognitive dissonance must be maddening.
But then comes a rather crucial point in his briefing that I have to comment on. While Andres may believe (and I think he does) that Scientology has never been doing better, he then goes on to directly lie to these people about how successful LA org is and how there are 700 people being walked through that organization every single day. There have been some other strategic lies also told earlier in this briefing of a similar nature. Not only is such a figure totally preposterous but I can also assure you that he knows it’s a lie.As crazy as much of what Andres has said so far, this lie is important because here Andres is doing the exact thing that I used to do and which made me eventually fed up with being a Sea Org member. It’s the point where you are telling more lies than you are truth and you know it.
This is a line that every Scientologist must eventually cross and how long they stay over that line is a measure of their own self-worth and ethical integrity. Andres fully knows there are nowhere near 700 people being walked through LA org every day. His office is right across the street from that building. If that many people were shuffling through LA org daily, they’d be spilling over into the streets all day long. No matter how badly the staff were treating that many people, a certain percentage of them would sign up for classes or auditing and would even come back to the point where LA org soon would be actually busting at the seams. In the end, it’s not really a very big building and it wouldn’t take much to actually fill it up with people doing Scientology services. Yet we know by numerous direct reports over the past year that LA org’s parking lot is devoid of cars and the one thing the entire PAC base is lacking is actual Scientologists. The only thing that the PAC Base is full of is hot air.
So there’s the carrot he’s feeding them, pumping them up on a pack of lies to continue to have hope and to continue paying their money and doing their services. Andres is encouraging them to do this because he knows that the faster he can get them through the services at their local org, the faster they will be “flowed up the line” to the Sea Org bases where the real money is made and the richer the Scientology coffers will become.
Of course because this is Scientology and they don’t know any other way to be, then comes the stick.
Andres lays out that if anyone in the room starts going off the party line and thinking for themselves by looking at any “entheta,” any source of information about Scientology other than the approved materials from the Church itself, they are going to be paying severely for their lack of faith. He doesn’t even need to say what it is that they can’t look at, because they already know “what they aren’t supposed to be looking at.” The most amazing thing to watch in this, frankly the most frightening and horrifying, is how everyone’s response to this in the audience is to laugh when he delivers this news.
They are willing participants in their own degradation and victimization. Are they being lied to? Yes they are. Are they being taken advantage of? Absolutely. But when told in no uncertain terms that they are not to think for themselves, their response is to nod vigorously and agree wholeheartedly. There’s no question in anyone’s mind what they are agreeing to. They swear to be good boys and girls and not accept any information from any source outside of Scientology because all of that information is inherently evil. This too bears highlighting because it is the end result of all of the indoctrination and mind control that has been done on them to date. None of the rest of what has been covered thus far in the earlier articles on this lecture holds a candle to the viciousness of what has been accomplished right here.
The rest of Andres’ briefing really is more of the same of what has been talked about already. Miscavige started re-shaping Scientology in his own image back in the late 1980s and went public with this in 1996 with the first Golden Age of Tech. Much of Scientology is unrecognizable now from Hubbard’s original writings because there have been such massive changes. Of course, Miscavige has not changed one comma of Hubbard’s insane ramblings about SPs and Fair Gaming and how to deal with “enemies” since all of that doctrine aligns fully with Miscavige’s paranoid view of the world and his obsession with holding on to the power he usurped from Hubbard. It is the methodologies that Miscavige has changed and he has consistently changed them to be even more damaging and more costly and more tedious than what existed before.
Andres describes more of these changes, now with yet another section of the Grade Chart that people are going to have to re-do (Power and Power Plus, which are done as the first part of the Solo auditing route to Clear if a person doesn’t go Clear on New Era Dianetics). At this point, it’s so commonplace in Scientology to be told that whatever gains you had in the past were worthless, that the public are all trained to unthinkingly go along with it.
There’s a lecture in Scientology, the title of which escapes me now, where Hubbard described exactly how “early whole track civilizations” were able to control planetary populations. In short, the way he said it was done was to get the populations to thought police themselves. Hubbard knew exactly what he was doing when he created the thought stopping mechanisms which are scattered throughout the Scientology policies and “technology”. You see exactly how its accomplished right here as Andres lays out for these people the consequences and reasons for not thinking for themselves. He’s not pulling any punches and the reasoning given in this briefing is exactly what the Scientology Ethics Officers do. It’s not complicated or very hard to understand. And its results are right here with these Scientologists willingly handing over their right to free thought.
Getting people into a state of mind where they will knowingly and willingly accept anything you say is no mean trick. Scientology is not the only destructive cult or mass movement in history to pull this off, but it has been noted that it is one of the best at doing this and that the damage is inflicts on its “parishioners” is among the worst of any of the destructive cults out there. While it is remarked upon here and there in Scientology criticisms, I personally believe that this, above all else, is the single most psychologically and spiritually damaging thing that Scientology does: It removes power of choice and initiative under the Orwellian guise of “returning self-determinism.”
Short of simply marching these people into a shower and releasing poison gas, I cannot think of a more vicious and evil thing you could possibly do to them.
That is the end result of Scientology. It is why this destructive cult is destructive and it’s why it has got to be stopped. When viewed in this light, you can see behind the amusing curtain of Andres’ song and dance and get what is really going on and we see that it’s not really very funny at all.
— Chris Shelton
Chris will join us on stage at our July 17 Denver appearance in support of our book, The Unbreakable Miss Lovely. We hope to see you there.
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Miss Lovely on parade
Miss Lovely enjoying summer vacation in Florida with former Scientology spokesman Mike Rinder, Blown For Good author Marc Headley, and former Scientologist Aaron Smith-Levin…
Somewhere on a library shelf, and a sign of more to come…
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Scientology discovers memes. LOL.
Oh now this is clever. A sample from the new Instagram account @thetruthnetworkmemes…
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Bonus photos from our tipsters
We’re in for big trouble tomorrow night!
Every little library helps!
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BOOK NOTES
We didn’t get a chance to include photos in our book, so we’ve posted them at a dedicated page. Reader Sookie put together a complete index and we’re hosting it here on the website. Copies of the paperback version of ‘The Unbreakable Miss Lovely’ are on sale at Amazon. The Kindle edition is also available, and shipping instantly.
Our upcoming appearances (and check out the interactive map to our ongoing tour)…
June 20: Chicago (with Christian Stolte) The Annoyance Theater, 5pm: This event is SOLD OUT.
June 22: Toronto (with Paulette Cooper) Toronto Public Library, 40 Orchard View Blvd, 7:30 pm, sponsored by the Centre for Inquiry-Canada
June 23: Toronto (with Paulette Cooper) The “Getting Clear” conference
June 28: Clearwater, Florida (with Paulette Cooper) Clearwater Public Library, 2 pm, sponsored by Center for Inquiry-Tampa Bay
July 12: Washington DC, Drummond Hall, 2 pm Center for Inquiry (with Paulette Cooper)
July 14: Hartford, MARK TWAIN HOUSE (with Tom Tomorrow)
July 17: Denver, The Secular Hub, 7 pm (with Chris Shelton)
July 20: Dallas, Times Ten Cellar, 7 pm (with Robert Wilonsky)
July 22: Houston, Fox and Hound, sponsored by Humanists of Houston
July 24: San Antonio
July 25: Austin
July 29: Paris (with Jonny Jacobsen)
August 4: London, Conway Hall (with John Sweeney)
August 24: Boston, Boston Skeptics in the Pub, 7 pm
September 16: Arizona State University
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Posted by Tony Ortega on June 19, 2015 at 07:00
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Learn about Scientology with our numerous series with experts…
BLOGGING DIANETICS: We read Scientology’s founding text cover to cover with the help of LA attorney and former church member Vance Woodward
UP THE BRIDGE: Claire Headley and Bruce Hines train us as Scientologists
GETTING OUR ETHICS IN: Jefferson Hawkins explains Scientology’s system of justice
SCIENTOLOGY MYTHBUSTING: Historian Jon Atack discusses key Scientology concepts
PZ Myers reads L. Ron Hubbard’s “A History of Man” | Scientology’s Master Spies | Scientology’s Private Dancer
The mystery of the richest Scientologist and his wayward sons | Scientology’s shocking mistreatment of the mentally ill
The Underground Bunker’s Official Theme Song | The Underground Bunker FAQ
Our Guide to Alex Gibney’s film ‘Going Clear,’ and our pages about its principal figures…
Jason Beghe | Tom DeVocht | Sara Goldberg | Paul Haggis | Mark “Marty” Rathbun | Mike Rinder | Spanky Taylor | Hana Whitfield
