Claire 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 you steamed us up in Scientology’s sauna program, the Purification Rundown. What’s up next?
CLAIRE: TRs and Objectives. The concept is that you have now freed yourself from the harmful effects of drugs and toxins in your body, so now you’re ready to be rehabilitated on the subject of control, communication, and havingness.
THE BUNKER: You can’t have too much havingness.
CLAIRE: We covered the primary objectives processes on the Hubbard Qualified Scientologist course — book and bottle, CCHs etc.
THE BUNKER: So we’re back to CCH — for control, communication, havingness — which involves touching walls and mimicking your twin, and we’re also back to talking to ashtrays.
CLAIRE: It’s more of the same. In other words, it’s a series of commands relating to physical execution. A big focus of the objectives is exteriorization. That’s the Scientology term for “out of body” experiences.
Honestly, this was a major part of Scientology that I never really came to terms with. I didn’t experience exteriorization, and that’s just the bottom line.
That’s not to say it doesn’t exist. I just didn’t experience it, although I felt really pressured on this subject beyond rationality. I never understood how being “out of my body” would make me a better person. Perhaps someone else experienced it and saw a benefit. I’m just telling you what happened for me. Exteriorization for me was the first thing in Scientology that really struck me as an “emperor’s new clothes” scenario.
Also, objectives can go on for tens to hundreds of hours if needed.
This is really basic stuff. This is considered to be the bottom of the grade chart, one of your first steps and an entry point into Scientology.
THE BUNKER: And yet here we are going through it for the second time on this trip up the Bridge.
CLAIRE: I hear rumors that today, top OTs — the people who have reached the top of the Bridge, the Operating Thetan levels — are being put back onto this step to redo the objectives. It doesn’t seem to matter that by policy you’re not supposed to ever have to redo anything. But now, redoing is the new order of the day.
THE BUNKER: This is more than a rumor. For at least the last year, we’ve seen a big emphasis on redoing the objectives, and now, with “Golden Age of Tech II” coming, we’ve seen multiple reports that redoing objectives is something all Scientologists are facing.
CLAIRE: Well, let me point out something about cost. Your auditing rates are determined by the level of auditor required to deliver the action. You can’t be audited by someone who is a lower case level than you are.
So in my case, I had reached OT V. That would mean that I could not be audited by someone lower than that level. And the OT V rates are, I believe, in the range of $1,000 to $1,500 per hour.
If I were to be sent back to do objectives, I’d be paying the OT V rate for really basic introductory steps.
That would rack up some serious bills in a very short period of time.
THE BUNKER: What a racket! Sure, yelling at an ashtray is all kinds of fun, but since you’re a big OT, your ashtray-yelling costs thousands per hour.
CLAIRE: The irony is that making someone redo a level they have already completed is deemed a technical degrade, and is a suppressive act. But obviously not if it’s ordered by David Miscavige.
In 2003, David Miscavige cancelled a whole boat load of people’s Clear states.
So for me, I was mid OT V and was given an “R-Factor” — short for Reality Factor. That’s supposed to be where you explain to someone what their next step is and why they “agree” with it and have “reality” on why that is needed.
My R-Factor was “Oops, we messed up, you’re not really Clear and now you’re going back on NED (New Era Dianetics).” It was a really bizarre situation since I had studied all the materials on the “Clear cognition” and had supervised delivery of the CCRD (Clear Certainty Rundown).
I’ve talked to a lot of people in and out of Scientology, and many of them were messed around with on the subject of Clear.
So from that experience, I can give you a pretty good idea of what must be happening with the objectives.
Since people have been leaving Scientology in droves, I’m sure this is Miscavige’s latest “Why.” In other words, this is how he explains to current members why other members have left. He tells them, obviously they really weren’t true OTs if they left. So let’s find out why people are leaving in droves. Aha! They all need to redo their objectives.
So now Mr. OT V is redoing these basic courses, but has to have them delivered by an auditor who is even higher on the Bridge than he is. And these are not quick courses. They can take hundreds of hours to get through.
THE BUNKER: Ka-CHING! For this installment, however, we’ll just use the same price for this course that we did the last time, at $1,000.
TOTAL SO FAR: $10,697
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Sports Illustrated Model Seen Entering Scientology’s Saddest Facility
Yesterday, the Daily Mail reported that model Jessica White made something of an obvious show of going into Scientology’s Celebrity Centre in New York.
Wait, Scientology has a Celebrity Centre in New York?
Yes, the org on 46th Street near Times Square tends to get the attention in this city, but there is a small, nondescript facility on East 82nd Street that we’ve walked past several times, and if you weren’t looking for it you’d likely walk right by without noticing it.
As Scientology facilities go — and we’ve seen quite a few — it’s just about the saddest-looking little place in David Miscavige’s real estate portfolio.
Can someone tell us what’s up with White, and why she’d think this was a good look?
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Posted by Tony Ortega on June 25, 2013 at 07:00
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