On Sundays, we love to bring you all the best that Scientology has to offer. The fliers and mailers and announcements about its good works around the globe.
It’s become a highlight of the week here at the Bunker, and we hope you enjoy this week’s offerings, which are brought to us by our tipsters near and far.
This week, we ponder the theta environment at Saint Hill Manor, cogitate over the miracles of the Bridge to Total Freedom, and of course get a vital update from the Library Campaign.
Also, we get some inspiration from a motivational speaker who is in a league of his own. We think you’ll agree with us on that one.
In 1990, author Jon Atack published what is still one of the very best books on L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology, A Piece of Blue Sky. Atack now has a new edition of the book out, and it reminded us what an encyclopedic resource he is. So we had an idea. In the world of Scientology watching, we noticed that there seem to be some legends, myths, and contested facts that tend to get hashed and rehashed in books, articles, and especially on the Internet. With Atack’s help, we’re going to tackle these issues one by one, drawing on Jon’s deep knowledge and sharp sense of humor.
This week, we have a great treat: Harlan Ellison is IN THE HOUSE. Yes, the legendary writer helped us out with our mythbusting this week, and that has thrown our entire program into disarray.
We’ll try to calm down and start at the beginning. What we wanted to discuss with Jon Atack this week was one of the most enduring parts of L. Ron Hubbard lore: Before he published Dianetics in 1950, did Hubbard really tell other people that he intended to make millions by starting a religion?
Welcome to our ongoing project, where we blog a 1950 first edition of Scientology’s bible, Dianetics, with the help of ex-Scientologist, Bay Area lawyer, blogger, and author Vance Woodward. Go here for the first post in the series.
In the last chapter, Hubbard made his big reveal, explaining that he had done what mankind had been unable to do for thousands of years — discover the nature of the reactive mind, which records our most awful moments during unconsciousness, and which plays back those moments at inopportune times. It’s the reactive mind that holds us back from being supermen.
As we pointed out, Hubbard had been setting readers up for this revelation for many pages, and then had announced his discovery with as much operatic force as he could muster.
That was all well and good, but he must have realized that he’s now made himself vulnerable. For any carnival barker, the build-up is 90 percent of the game, and once you reveal what it is you’ve been selling, you then have to worry about a backlash when your Feejee Mermaid, for example, turns out to be held together with papier-mâché.
Hubbard knows this, so in this next chapter, he does some fancy backpedaling.
Our thanks to Phil Plait, who alerted us to this on Twitter. Several amazing videos are coming in from the Ural Mountains region of Russia, where a meteor provided an incredible show about an hour ago (midnight Eastern time), near the city of Chelyabinsk.
Plait (of Bad Astronomer fame) guesses that this object is unrelated to 2012DA14, a 50-meter asteroid that is passing very close to the Earth in several more hours.
So far, the only reporting on this we’ve seen is a Reuters report mistakenly labeling this a “meteor shower.” This is clearly not a shower but a single object, a meteor, which looks like it broke up, producing parallel trails as it burned up in a spectacular daytime fireball.
Ever since Debbie Cook rocked Scientology with her infamous New Year’s Eve e-mail last year, Scientology leader David Miscavige has been on a major campaign to disprove one of her complaints — that he’s not spending money to burnish the church’s image.
Cook, a longtime, somewhat legendary employee of Scientology’s “Sea Org,” shocked her fellow church members with her e-mail, which accused Miscavige of, among other things, amassing a billion-dollar slush fund through donations to the International Association of Scientologists. And while every church member was under intense pressure to donate to the IAS’s coffers, they were seeing nothing to show for it. When was the last time, she asked, that a Scientologist ever saw a church ad on television?
Well, Miscavige appeared to take that part of her screed to heart. Since the spring of last year, the church has been on a major network television advertising binge, showing up most recently during the Super Bowl and the Grammys. And we’ve noticed other efforts that are aimed at countering all the bad press the church has been subject to.
We’re bursting with pride here in the Underground Bunker for Dee Findlay, a reader who first made contact with us about a year ago.
At that point, she had just decided to come out of Scientology, and had discovered the Voice blog almost right away. She became a frequent reader and commenter, and also communicated with us behind the scenes. We couldn’t say it then, but she’s been a great inspiration for us.
That was especially true last July, when Karen de la Carriere stood up to the church that didn’t want her to see her own dead son, and several of our readers banded together with her in solidarity and dared to reveal their real identities in the comments section of our blog. One of them was Dee.
Dee has become one of our most active commenters — under the name DeElizabethan — and now, she’s shared with us her latest accomplishment: she’s been declared a Suppressive Person by the Church of Scientology!
Oops! We plum forgot that we’d scheduled this video for this morning. Things have been a bit crazy around the Bunker lately, and we did imbibe a bit last night, joining in to “wet the head” of our newest reader, Grayson Headley. (And so did Jonny Jacobsen — check out the photos we added this morning!)
Anyway, we have to say the Birmingham Org really seems to have stepped up its game judging by this Star Wars cavalcade it put on recently in order to separate local Scientologists from their money.
After the jump, we’ll remind you of what a Birmingham fundraiser looked like back in 2011!
The Underground Bunker is pleased to announce the birth of Grayson Pierce Headley, who entered the world at 10:50 this morning at 8 pounds, 15.9 ounces.
This makes three boys for Marc and Claire Headley, who were finally able to start a family after they left Scientology’s Sea Org in 2005.
Marc assures us it was not a silent birth.
Says Claire: “I’d like to see L. Ron Hubbard give birth silently.”
This Photoshopped image of Scientology leader David Miscavige as Pope was created by the smart-asses over at Anonymous. We think it’s blasphemous. Which is why it’s so darn funny.
The surprising news this morning is that Pope Benedict XVI is resigning at the end of the month, the first pope to walk away from the position since 1415.
When he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, before he became pope in 2005, he expressed the opinion that popes of elderly age and failing health should step down rather than hold on to the title to the bitter end. So perhaps the frail 85-year-old is just taking his own advice. But there will be endless speculation about how much his decision was influenced by the Catholic Church’s ongoing controversy over pedophile priests — and Ratzinger’s involvement in the past to sweep away that growing scandal.
A religious leader stepping down as his church is mired in scandal: Well, we can’t help thinking of another church that finds itself gripped by several crises, and for which its members, past and present, have vocally blamed its leader for helping to create.
With Pope Benedict stepping down, we wondered, what would it take to depose Scientology’s leader, David Miscavige?
Add this to the list of amazing things actor Tom Cruise can do with his Scientology superpowers: he can revive the dead!
We’d heard about this 1972 lecture by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard — it’s one of the more notorious ones and has been referred to numerous times both before and since the Internet came along and made Scientology’s secrets more accessible — but this is the first time we’ve actually heard the lecture itself. In it, Hubbard describes how a Scientology auditor (counselor) can convince a soul — or thetan, in Scientology parlance — to return to its body after a car accident or a drowning. (If the auditor is quick enough and assertive, that is. Hubbard bemoans that in one case he couldn’t get close enough to a drowned Negro to help him in time.)
Enjoy this four-minute excerpt we found on the web and follow along with the transcript we’ve provided below.
On Sundays, we love to bring you all the best that Scientology has to offer. The fliers and mailers and announcements about its good works around the globe. 
