With the help of experts like Claire Headley and Bruce Hines, we’ve been taking a journey to train as Scientologists. Claire spent years working with Scientology’s “tech,” and was trusted to oversee the auditing of Tom Cruise. Bruce was in Scientology for 31 years and spent about half that time as a senior case supervisor. Go here to see the first part in this series.
For more than a year, we’ve been exploring Scientology’s “Bridge to Total Freedom,” step by step. We last left off after Bruce Hines helped us understand Operating Thetan Level Seven. That leaves us with one final level on the Bridge, OT 8. We plan to dive deeply into that final step on our journey.
But before we do that, we wanted to take a detour. Since we want to end this series on OT 8, we thought we’d do things a little out of order and spend some time now on the “L Rundowns.”
The “L’s,” as they’re known, can come after OT 8, but they also can come at any time after OT 3. They’re a separate set of very expensive rundowns that are supposed to be “boosters” for Scientologists working on their OT levels. At least, that’s how the introduction to the L’s reads in our materials.
The L’s — L10, L11, and L12 — are delivered at Scientology’s spiritual ‘mecca’ in Clearwater, Florida. According to Scientology, they “increase a person’s power and effectiveness.” Also, they are supposed to help a person get through the OT levels faster.
So what’s in L10?
The L10 intro tells us it is “designed to handle the things a thetan uses to restrain himself. The person regains his ability and power to do those things he intends to do and as a result he feels more at cause than ever before.”
To begin, there is a huge amount of review (which seems common for most Scientology processes), and various tests to make sure the subject is in the right frame of mind for the level itself.
L10 then begins with many individual “rundowns” and auditing. The subject is read chains of many words as the auditor looks for reactions on the E-meter.
The subject is also read lists of questions on various “dynamics” — questions related to his relationships (2nd dynamic), the larger group (3rd dynamic) and so on.
Then come questions from a “sec check” (security check, or interrogation). These get rather interesting. Here’s a sample.
Is there some connection you won’t let go of?
Have you ever done a family member in?
Have you ever brutalized another with sex?
Are you best left alone?
Are women stupid?
Do you have a secret desire to annihilate the opposite sex?
Are you spied on?
How powerful do you have to be to be successful?
Are other people necessary?
Have you squashed a thetan out of existence?
Is life worth living?
Are you facing eternity with lack of hope?
Is there hope for man?
Another set of questions is specifically designed to force the subject to admit to “overts” — transgressions that he or she is hiding.
One set of questions is about family. A sample of them…
Have you ever badly raised a child?
Have you ever split up a family?
Have you ever forced a child into an unsuitable profession?
Have you neglected your child’s education?
The next set of questions is about sex.
Have you ever sexually aroused someone and then not satisfied him (her)?
Have you ever made love to a person of the wrong race?
Have you ever made love to a person of the wrong species?
Have you ever used the wrong body part for intercourse?
Have you ever failed to have intercourse with someone you should have?
Have you ever misused sex?
There are many more sets of questions and processes.
For the L Rundowns, we’re turning to our old friend Jefferson Hawkins to help us out. (If you haven’t read the series Jeff did for us on Scientology ethics, you really must.) Jeff, what can you tell us about L10?
JEFFERSON: I was one of the Ls “guinea pigs” in 1971. I was on the Apollo for administrative training — I did the Organization Executive Course and the Flag Executive Briefing Course (which had just been released). Students had been brought in from Orgs all over the world to be trained up and groomed up as the new wave of super-executives for Scientology. The FEBC was supposed to train us to be ruthless “Product Officers” who would relentlessly drive staff to higher and higher stats and never be reasonable with “downstats.” I was 25 at the time. We were treated like VIPs — we were berthed in the A Deck cabins and we ate in the Officers’ Mess.
As part of the overall package, the FEBC students were also supposed to receive these new L Rundowns. They were supposed to make us into super-powerful unstoppable beings. My auditor was the infamous Otto Roos, who was a Class XII Auditor and trained on the L Rundowns. I recall L-10 as being a sort of whole track Sec Check. All of those questions you listed and many more were asked and were taken earlier and earlier until you were running incidents millions or billions of years ago. It was supposed to free up your attention from those ancient misdeeds and make you more powerful in present time. In retrospect I’d have to say that it made me believe that I was more powerful. It gave me a sort of temporary dopamine rush.
Hubbard had announced that no FEBC student would be allowed to leave the ship unless they were “exterior with full perceptics.” This created a lot of excitement. However, as Otto and I were wrapping up the L Rundowns, I expressed to him that I personally wasn’t exterior with full perceptics yet. He told me, in essence, not to worry about it. And Hubbard still went on announcing that every FEBC student left the ship exterior with full perceptics. And of course, being a good Scientologist, I assumed I was the only one who didn’t. Again in retrospect I’m sure that no student left with that kind of “OT” perception.
THE BUNKER: The sec check questions in L10 seem really invasive. Do you have any thoughts about being subjected to that kind of interrogation, and then feeling some kind of euphoria afterwards?
JEFFERSON: It is terribly invasive, but as a Scientologist you get acclimated to it. Your auditor is like your therapist, you open up to him or her and confide everything, all the innermost thoughts and so on. And the auditor is also like a “tough love” therapist, pulling out those things you don’t want to talk about. All of this is done with the supposed assurance that whatever you say is just between you and your auditor. When you realize that isn’t the case — that your sessions are being openly shared and talked about and so on — it sort of breaks the spell. I don’t think Scientologists these days have a deep bond with their auditor.
And yes, generally a session ends with a feeling of euphoria. Auditors are trained to watch for those euphoric moments, any sort of “aha” moment or feeling of well-being, and end off quickly.
THE BUNKER: According to a 2007 price list, L10 takes 50 to 150 hours — so we’ll assume 100, in the middle. And 100 hours of L rundowns auditing runs $72,000
COST THIS WEEK: $72,000
COST SO FAR: $460,805.50
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Part 3 of Chris Shelton’s video series on Scientology
Another fascinating installment from Chris — this time about Scientology’s infallibility.
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Posted by Tony Ortega on April 15, 2014 at 07:00
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Learn about Scientology with our numerous series with experts…
BLOGGING DIANETICS (We read Scientology’s founding text) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25
UP THE BRIDGE (Claire Headley and Bruce Hines train us as Scientologists) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43
GETTING OUR ETHICS IN (Jefferson Hawkins explains Scientology’s system of justice) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14
SCIENTOLOGY MYTHBUSTING (Historian Jon Atack discusses key Scientology concepts) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43
PZ Myers reads L. Ron Hubbard’s “A History of Man” | Scientology’s Master Spies | Scientology’s Private Dancer
