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To help us get through the pandemic, L. Ron Hubbard’s words of Scientology wisdom

[L. Ron Hubbard, circa 1963]

STAY HOME. There, we said it. Take the coronavirus seriously, keep calm, but most importantly, minimize your contact with other people and stay home.

Your proprietor, because of his childhood asthma, has a somewhat compromised respiratory system, so we started taking the epidemic seriously quite some time ago. We have been very effectively isolating ourselves from other humans, but we do like to leave the bunker for bike rides in the fresh air, and it alarms us to see some restaurants still busy and packed full.

Don’t do that. Stay home. Have a beer, turn on Netflix, and chill.

So what are you going to do for a few weeks with no place to go? Oh, that’s easy. Scientology will get us through this. There’s still plenty for us to gawk at regarding L. Ron Hubbard’s bizarre cabal, and we don’t plan on shutting down just because everything around us is on hold.

For example, we have a fun little item for you today. In case you had any doubt that Scientology is still, in the year 2020, selling superhuman powers to the gullible, we have another excerpt from the latest issue of “Freewinds” magazine, a publication dedicated to convincing church members to drop a small fortune for classes on Scientology’s private cruise ship.

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As in every Scientology magazine, a few pages have been set aside for the old man, and in this case his words are really quite fun and nutty. Here’s proof positive of something we’ve pointed out again and again, that in his lectures and writings, Hubbard promised that if you did enough of his processing, you would eventually regain powers so potent, you could crush steel (or a planet) with your fingertips.

We also find it timely given the current situation, since Scientologists should be pretty bewildered that with those sorts of powers at their disposal, the annual gathering of Operating Thetans for L. Ron Hubbard’s birthday celebration in Clearwater, Florida was canceled this weekend for fears about spreading the virus. What would the Great Thetan say that his party had been canceled for such MEST-y reasons? Oh, the shame.

And finally, we thought it was an interesting lecture by Hubbard because it’s what he was blathering about on the very day your proprietor was born.

So here it is. We look forward to your thoughts on Hubbard’s sparkling ideas — we especially like that he apparently doesn’t have a clue what the Magellanic Clouds are, and we also now learn that the inability to pick up a telephone without crushing it eventually led to thetans getting trapped in meat bodies. Who knew?

We’d also like to hear all about how things are going with you as you hunker down in your home in your own underground bunker and avoid other human beings like, well, the plague…

 

I have been exploring the actual potentialities of an Operating Thetan.

I once gave a demonstration to some Supervisors. You take the cellophane off a packet of cigarettes, set it down and ask somebody to pick it up without denting it even slightly. He actually won’t be able to do it. You think you can get your fingers on it, but you’ll always see a flutter of dent. It isn’t just the structure or fabric, it’s the fact that if you could exactly measure the pressure to put on that cellophane packet, you could pick it up without a dent and without any collapse of its wall or side.

That’s probably the basic problem of an Operating Thetan.

The power of an Operating Thetan is such that if he were to pick up a steel cylinder capable of resisting several hundred pounds to the square inch, he would have the same problem that you have with the cellophane.

His problem is how does he touch things without crushing them? He picks up a steel cylinder and it has a dent on both sides. You should actually practice with a cellophane cigarette wrapper to get the exact sensation of being careful that an Operating Thetan has in handling MEST. You’ll find it quite restimulative.

People who haven’t that level of action, then, are coaxed into believing that an Operating Thetan, or a “free thetan,” is destructive. And they would lay into a free thetan that he was destructive and trap him by making him touch something, to break it up, and to convince him even further, to build something that looked strong but was fragile. That was your first trap. Because it caused the free thetan to pick up a new trick: doing things by intention.

We’ve always thought of that as primary. And it is not primary; it is secondary. A postulate and action through a postulate is secondary to action through energy. You have to be able to do both. It is more natural for a thetan to pick up a crayon by picking it up — not necessarily mocking-up beams to pick it up, but picking it up. But if his idea of his own destructivity is great, he will develop a secondary means of picking it up. And this secondary means is operation by intention. He’ll pick it up by postulate; he will intend it up. And he can do that too, but it imposes a great restraint on him and is, in actual fact, a great downgrade from simply picking it up.

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He trains this intention to become involuntary — the involuntary intention.

You intend things. Understand that as a big difference. To intend a piece of chalk to rise. A thetan can do it, but he doesn’t have to touch it and doesn’t. He intends it and it will rise. And that’s very downscale. That’s monkey business and nonsense. That’s the same as putting yourself on a fantastic withhold.

You can have that same sensation with the cigarette-packet cellophane. After you’ve seen that you can’t pick it up without making it ripple, do the rest of the exercise. Get the idea of intending it to rise. And you’ll at once get what you used to do with other things.

An OT answering a telephone sounds very funny. But the telephone is actually a problem to an Operating Thetan: the things are fragile, they short-circuit, their lines fuse.

Unless you understand this as too great an exerted power and force within the ethical limits of the individual, you will never understand the problems an Operating Thetan has. A thetan, in dealing with himself, is dealing with somebody who is stronger than the fragility with which he is surrounded.

There are two solutions to this. The solution that the Operating Thetan ordinarily took was wrong. That was to develop an involuntary intention. When the telephone rings, it springs into the air in his vicinity and he talks. It actually will spring into the air and stay there. In other words, he has an automatic action. Telephone rings, springs in the air, he talks. Involuntary intention. He has a postulate, then, which does things without his having to actively intend them.

There’s nothing wrong with this, but why an involuntary intention? That’s to keep from crushing telephones. That’s all very well, but it’s that same thing that gives you a time track. Apparently there’s no difference between an involuntary intention to act and an involuntary intention to duplicate and an involuntary intention to create. That’s probably the genus of the time track. That’s hypothetical. The other, the telephone bit, is actual.

It becomes an automatic intention and then he doesn’t know what this automatic intention is. Somebody comes along and gives him things for the automatic intention to mock-up which would be bad for him or jam the machinery of his automatic intention. They make him fight his own automatic intention.

The next thing you know, he has a messed-up time track. The next thing you know, he’s solid. The next thing you know, he picks up a meat body.

But the withhold begins with the piece of cellophane. Steel is cellophane.

The other solution is to surround yourself with things that don’t go boom! With a telephone that you’re supposed to use all the time, recognize what’s happening to you and put something there that you can handle — a simple solution — and you won’t go downhill. What are you doing on a big withhold all the time? You know the basis of withholding. It sets you up for all sorts of things.

The main thing it sets you up for is this mechanism of automatic intention and that sets you up for an automatic time track.

So much for that. But what does it have to do with this galaxy? A lot.

Because the second we look at the actual true character of an Operating Thetan, we recognize what we are dealing with and why all this could be very upsetting in various directions.

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Early on, conceiving that free thetans were very dangerous and should be shot down in their tracks, people started laying in implants. Very often, a long time before the planet came under attack from these implant people, waves of radioactive clouds — Magellanic Clouds, black and gray — would sweep over and engulf the planet. And there would be an atmosphere of radioactivity which was highly antipathetic to the living beings, bodies and plants on the planet.

All of a sudden these otherwise-clear skies that would have merely rain clouds in them would become radioactive. The wise savants of the day who sat there stroking their long, useless diplomas explained it as a disintegration of the universe, as natural phenomena. “At a certain period in the life of the galaxy, the Magellanic radioactive masses at the interior of the hub begin to disperse themselves out toward the rim. This is known as the Keplin-Spreplin law and the Booplum-Booplin law. And the calculations are M to the gup-gup squared or the rippety-rip-bog to the tenth power.”

But the truth of the matter is somebody was letting these clouds loose. Because of that scientific theory, nobody found out for a long time that it was being done. It was incredible that anybody would do it. The natural law that you could use it to do it was not known.

When a system had been engulfed, they would send ships in. Little orange-colored bombs that would talk. Speech was frozen into electronic capsules. It was all very clever. The utter insanity! That made it so incredible nobody believed it and that was one of their great protections. Why would anybody go to this much trouble?

Don’t suppose that a thetan was picked up the first time. It was very clever. They had some means of contracting a traction beam. These guys were pretty smart electronically, way advanced. He would resist it, but in a year or two he would run into another one and again he would resist it. A while later he would run into another one and again he’d resist it. Then finally — when he didn’t have his attention on it and he’d already been weakened and was beginning to worry — the beam would go choomp, pull him up into the sky and enclose him in a capsule.

Sometimes between the next month or six months or something like that, they would shoot him into the implant area and fix him on a post. There was a little monowheel pole trap and it had the effigy of a body on it. He didn’t have a body and a pole trap had a body on it. They didn’t care whether somebody was used to having bodies or not used to having bodies. And away he’d go through this thing.

He would eventually get off it and go home and then, sooner or later, he was picked up again. And this time he would be much weaker.

You can imagine what would happen on a planet which had been going along, minding its own business — no trouble, no wars — and suddenly its clouds turn into radioactive masses. All of a sudden orange bursts come down out of the clouds, representing God and chariots or something, and all kinds of rumors are thrown around. After that period the planet was almost totally in revolt.

That is the atmosphere of an ungovernable area. That’s the atmosphere of hysteria. You’re going to find the world going crazier and crazier in that particular direction.

Why? Because radioactive fallout is adequate enough to start keying it in. We are not looking at a calm future on this planet. If we weren’t sitting here today, doing our job, Lord knows what would happen on this planet.

But we have some responsibility in this direction. What do you think a thetan feels like when he suddenly finds himself freed — or a third free and perhaps able to operate some — and he sees around him the symbols carried forward on the track which destroyed his civilizations in the past? What do you think his reaction is going to be?

So there are several political and organizational factors that confront our immediate future. They have to do with the facts of things as they are, not as we would like to have them. If we handle things as they are, it may come about that we can have things as we would like to have them. But I’m afraid we have to take it in that order and plan and work accordingly. And if we do, everything will be well.

Of course the job, at once, is to make somebody Clear, make somebody OT.

— L. Ron Hubbard, May 23, 1963

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Bonus items from our tipsters

Perhaps our oldtimers can tell us how unusual this is…

 

 
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Source Code

“I had a number of US Senators interested in this. As a matter of fact I had the senate dining room one day — I had lots of friends down there in those days, still would have if I went down and stuck my nose in. Every time I do, why they all say, ‘Hey, Ron! Where the hell have you been?’ you know. ‘What’s the matter, you mad at me?’ Something like that. I’d say, ‘Oh, I’ve been busy.’ And I had the senate dining room down there one noon, I remember, along about this period [in 1950]. And you could have heard a toothpick fall from one end of it to the other….I was telling them somebody had found the dynamic principle of existence and I was telling people what it was and so forth. And that place was jammed from one corner to the other with senators and so forth. The next thing you know the table outside of the perimeter of the table I was sitting at with three or four old senators and the table outside that went silent and the table outside that went silent and the table outside that went silent and the next thing you know there wasn’t anything happening in that dining room. The waiters were standing there, see. Darnedest thing you ever wanted to see, you know! And I said, ‘Gee!’ I said, ‘I’ve got a bear by the tail here, you know.’ That was actually before anything much had occurred. They had never heard of this book or anything.” — L. Ron Hubbard, March 16, 1965

 
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Overheard in the FreeZone

“If I focus on the whole or being one with all, I can encompass all the possibilities. If I focus on ‘me’ or ‘I,’ it seems as if I can also see myself as whole or of component parts such as different types of identities. It is similar to seeing a car. One calls it a car to sum up all the components. Same is with a body. We can look at the planet and say, it is a planet but it is composed of billions and billions of parts and pieces. Same as expanding out even further, and labeling all as One. But, what would you call it other than the One or main thetan or God?”

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Random Howdy

“Before today I considered Miscavige a cynical manipulating sociopath, and they’re a dime a dozen. Now he seems to be more the dangerously insane Idi Amin-style dictator. This doesn’t bode well for the future.”

 
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Full Court Press: What we’re watching at the Underground Bunker

Criminal prosecutions:
Jay Spina: Sentencing set for April 3 in White Plains
Hanan and Rizza Islam and other family members: Trial set for April 14 in Los Angeles

Civil litigation:
Luis and Rocio Garcia v. Scientology: Waiting for an appellate decision from the Eleventh Circuit
Valerie Haney v. Scientology: Forced to ‘religious arbitration.’ Hearing on motion for reconsideration set for April 16
Chrissie Bixler et al. v. Scientology: April 22 (plaintiff attorneys pro hac vice), June (demurrers by Masterson and Scientology), June (motions to compel arbitration)
Jane Doe v. Scientology (in Miami): Jane Doe’s attorneys have asked for discovery, March 19 depositions (Warren McShane, Lynn Farny), March 24 deposition (David Miscavige), April 20 hearing set (motion to compel arbitration)
Matt and Kathy Feschbach bankruptcy appeal: Oral arguments were held on March 11 in Jacksonville
Brian Statler Sr v. City of Inglewood: Complaint filed.

 
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Start making your plans…

 
Head over to the convention website and meet us in St. Louis!

 
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Scientology’s celebrities, ‘Ideal Orgs,’ and more!

[Alanna Masterson, Terry Jastrow, and Marisol Nichols]

We’ve been building landing pages about David Miscavige’s favorite playthings, including celebrities and ‘Ideal Orgs,’ and we’re hoping you’ll join in and help us gather as much information as we can about them. Head on over and help us with links and photos and comments.

Scientology’s celebrities, from A to Z! Find your favorite Hubbardite celeb at this index page — or suggest someone to add to the list!

Scientology’s ‘Ideal Orgs,’ from one end of the planet to the other! Help us build up pages about each these worldwide locations!

Scientology’s sneaky front groups, spreading the good news about L. Ron Hubbard while pretending to benefit society!

Scientology Lit: Books reviewed or excerpted in our weekly series. How many have you read?

 
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THE WHOLE TRACK

[ONE year ago] Miss America organization says it’s looking into Scientology’s use of Miss New York
[TWO years ago] Hey, IRS: You might want to look at this new photo Scientology posted of David Miscavige
[THREE years ago] Understanding Marty Rathbun: For the first time, his full deposition of 2014
[FOUR years ago] Ron Miscavige book out in May: ‘Ruthless: Scientology, My Son David Miscavige, and Me’
[FIVE years ago] Mareka Brousseau on the degradations of Scientology’s Sea Org life
[SIX years ago] With Scientology’s ‘disconnection’ policy finally hitting the mainstream, here’s more to consider
[SEVEN years ago] Xenu the The Movie Star! When Scientology Almost Revealed Its Secrets on the Big Screen
[EIGHT years ago] Scientology on the High Seas: Hubbard Claims Victory Over the U.S. Navy

 
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Scientology disconnection, a reminder

Bernie Headley (1952-2019) did not see his daughter Stephanie in his final 5,667 days.
Valerie Haney has not seen her mother Lynne in 1,879 days.
Katrina Reyes has not seen her mother Yelena in 2,383 days
Sylvia Wagner DeWall has not seen her brother Randy in 1,903 days.
Brian Sheen has not seen his grandson Leo in 923 days.
Geoff Levin has not seen his son Collin and daughter Savannah in 814 days.
Christie Collbran has not seen her mother Liz King in 4,121 days.
Clarissa Adams has not seen her parents Walter and Irmin Huber in 1,989 days.
Carol Nyburg has not seen her daughter Nancy in 2,763 days.
Jamie Sorrentini Lugli has not seen her father Irving in 3,537 days.
Quailynn McDaniel has not seen her brother Sean in 2,883 days.
Dylan Gill has not seen his father Russell in 11,449 days.
Melissa Paris has not seen her father Jean-Francois in 7,368 days.
Valeska Paris has not seen her brother Raphael in 3,536 days.
Mirriam Francis has not seen her brother Ben in 3,117 days.
Claudio and Renata Lugli have not seen their son Flavio in 3,378 days.
Sara Goldberg has not seen her daughter Ashley in 2,416 days.
Lori Hodgson has not seen her son Jeremy and daughter Jessica in 2,129 days.
Marie Bilheimer has not seen her mother June in 1,654 days.
Charley Updegrove has not seen his son Toby in 1,181 days.
Joe Reaiche has not seen his daughter Alanna Masterson in 5,744 days
Derek Bloch has not seen his father Darren in 2,884 days.
Cindy Plahuta has not seen her daughter Kara in 3,204 days.
Roger Weller has not seen his daughter Alyssa in 8,059 days.
Claire Headley has not seen her mother Gen in 3,179 days.
Ramana Dienes-Browning has not seen her mother Jancis in 1,534 days.
Mike Rinder has not seen his son Benjamin and daughter Taryn in 5,837 days.
Brian Sheen has not seen his daughter Spring in 1,943 days.
Skip Young has not seen his daughters Megan and Alexis in 2,345 days.
Mary Kahn has not seen her son Sammy in 2,217 days.
Lois Reisdorf has not seen her son Craig in 1,800 days.
Phil and Willie Jones have not seen their son Mike and daughter Emily in 2,295 days.
Mary Jane Barry has not seen her daughter Samantha in 2,549 days.
Kate Bornstein has not seen her daughter Jessica in 13,658 days.

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Posted by Tony Ortega on March 16, 2020 at 07:00

E-mail tips to tonyo94 AT gmail DOT com or follow us on Twitter. We also post updates at our Facebook author page. After every new story we send out an alert to our e-mail list and our FB page.

Our new book with Paulette Cooper, Battlefield Scientology: Exposing L. Ron Hubbard’s dangerous ‘religion’ is now on sale at Amazon in paperback and Kindle formats. Our book about Paulette, The Unbreakable Miss Lovely: How the Church of Scientology tried to destroy Paulette Cooper, is on sale at Amazon in paperback, Kindle, and audiobook versions. We’ve posted photographs of Paulette and scenes from her life at a separate location. Reader Sookie put together a complete index. More information can also be found at the book’s dedicated page.

The Best of the Underground Bunker, 1995-2019 Just starting out here? We’ve picked out the most important stories we’ve covered here at the Underground Bunker (2012-2019), The Village Voice (2008-2012), New Times Los Angeles (1999-2002) and the Phoenix New Times (1995-1999)

Other links: BLOGGING DIANETICS: Reading Scientology’s founding text cover to cover | 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 | Shelly Miscavige, 14 years gone | The Lisa McPherson story told in real time | The Cathriona White stories | The Leah Remini ‘Knowledge Reports’ | Hear audio of a Scientology excommunication | Scientology’s little day care of horrors | Whatever happened to Steve Fishman? | Felony charges for Scientology’s drug rehab scam | Why Scientology digs bomb-proof vaults in the desert | PZ Myers reads L. Ron Hubbard’s “A History of Man” | Scientology’s Master Spies | 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

Watch our short videos that explain Scientology’s controversies in three minutes or less…

Check your whale level at our dedicated page for status updates, or join us at the Underground Bunker’s Facebook discussion group for more frivolity.

Our non-Scientology stories: Robert Burnham Jr., the man who inscribed the universe | Notorious alt-right inspiration Kevin MacDonald and his theories about Jewish DNA | The selling of the “Phoenix Lights” | Astronomer Harlow Shapley‘s FBI file | Sex, spies, and local TV news | Battling Babe-Hounds: Ross Jeffries v. R. Don Steele

 

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