We want to thank all the readers who forwarded us the news out of Long Island this week after a business publication there broke the story that Scientology had plunked down $15.2 million for a 62,500-square-foot office building in Melville.
Some folks sounded a bit panicked. Why was Scientology buying property in Long Island? Was this some secret expansion? Should the people there be worried?
Breathe easy, Long Islanders. This is just another inglorious lurch forward for Scientology leader David Miscavige’s “Ideal Org” project, and one that has been coming a long time.
The few remaining Scientologists in this dwindling movement are under intense pressure to fork over huge amounts for Miscavige’s project, which replaces existing missions or churches with “Ideal Orgs.” It’s not actually expansion, it’s just blind ambition.
Just recently, Miscavige opened new Ideal Orgs in Austin, Mexico City, and Chicago that had been planned, built, and sat waiting for their openings for years. In the meantime, Miscavige amped up the pressure on places like Long Island, Battle Creek, Hawaii, and Albuquerque to get busy and hold fabulous fundraising parties.
We especially remember one that was held in Long Island a couple of years ago, when the folks there were encouraged to dress up for a Great Gatsby party. Remember?
Yeah, it looked like a gas.
And after years of fundraising, purchasing a building was going to happen sooner or later. But that doesn’t mean Long Island is going to have a new Ideal Org anytime soon. Something like 15 years passed between the purchase of buildings and Ideal Org openings in places like Chicago and Kansas City.
And even then, after some initial hoopla at a grand opening, Ideal Orgs then settle into inactivity.
The Chicago org, that was opened to so much frenetic folderol just two weeks ago? Our helper went by this week, and it’s already empty.
So please, Long Islanders, don’t panic. Scientology will eventually turn that empty office building in Melville into an empty Ideal Org, and the effect on your communities will be less than zero.
Scientologists declare 2024 LRH Birthday Event to be ‘Epic’
Church leader David Miscavige presided over another L. Ron Hubbard birthday event last night as it returned to Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater, Florida.
He would have regaled his followers with video from the recent three Ideal Org openings in Austin, Mexico City, and Chicago, of course.
And our thanks to Alex Barnes-Ross, who ran across this exchange by Scientologists on social media talking about last night’s party…
This planet will be cleared in no time.
O Canada! Scientology in Edmonton
Speaking of Scientology orgs, reader Garumpf went by one and sent us this report…
Its scouting time again. This time I went to the city of Edmonton in Alberta, which has an org on Jasper Street downtown.
The area seems decent enough, but it has been under heavy construction for years.
I talked briefly to the bartender in a bar across the street from the org. I asked him about the area and he said it was a decent area, most of the neighbours were nice, with a few exceptions. I asked which were less than great and he declined to give specifics. I had to guess he was referring to Scientology, but to be fair there was a strip club less than a block behind the restaurant which could have been a pain too.
Scientology seems to have had a presence in Edmonton for a while. I could not find a start date, but I know they used to be housed in the place that the Edmonton Farmers Market now possesses.
Their current building at 10525 Jasper was originally two buildings constructed in the early 1900s. Scientology bought them and spent eight months renovating them. According to the contractor they:
reinforce existing floor and roof structure. Replace all roofing. Bring building up to current building code. Install new Roof Top HVAC units. Upgrade electrical service. A new facade incorporating new store front windows & entrances, cutting new upper windows on the second level, restoring the existing brick to original.
Now the building is 10,000 square feet with a 5,000 square foot basement.
I visited loopnet.ca and it looks like the basement is currently available to rent, but the upper floor only has approximately 1,000 of the 5,000 feet free.
The site I was on listed the tenets of the building as Beauty Rewind (main floor, west end) Pub 1905 (main floor, center east), The Wine Room (main floor east end) Your Mobile (no idea, never saw it) and the law firm: Attia Reeves on the 2nd floor. Notice who was not listed there?
Scientology is on the lower level west center, and I can not tell for sure, but I believe the vast majority of the second floor is theirs.
The front of the building looks quite nice. You could tell it was recently maintained. Before I went I looked it up on Google street view. Most of the pictures show the Scientology frontage, but a couple angles show it before they moved in, so they have not been there all that long.
I was in Edmonton for a few days and I wanted to make several passes by the building. Side note and a little about me: The vast majority of time I am impervious to cold. I shovel my driveway in a T-shirt and mittens, and sometimes in shorts. So I headed downtown lightly dressed. I left Toronto at approx. 10 Celsius. I got to Edmonton and it was -23. Of course I had my coats, but I had left them in the car. I had expected to warm up at the Rocky Mountain Ice House restaurant I had heard good things about, but it was closed. The wind was blowing directly on me and I was getting really cold really fast. I snapped a quick pic of the org, but my fingers were so cold that the tablet did not register them. On the third attempt it finally did.
I was too cold to keep going so I ducked into a nearby restaurant, got supper and thawed. The wind was still blowing so I beat a retreat to the car and left.
One thing I noticed is the windows on the second floor were uncovered and lit. Given that they were over the beauty shop which was definitely closed, I can only conclude they were Scientology's windows. I never saw anyone in them, but that is the only conclusion I can make.
I came back the next day with warmer clothes. I am glad I did. It was -18 and still breezy. My hands and body were good, but my face was seriously complaining about cold.
I again went to the Rocky Mountain Ice House almost directly across the road from the org and ate supper. It was pretty good. Not 5 stars but I would go back.
I talked to the bartender there and he was not real interested in talking about the local neighbours, simply saying that most are good, some are pains and the area had seen a lot of construction for the past several years.
I then left and moved down the building some. There is a set of stairs with a kind of patio area that I stopped in, it gave me a slightly better view of the org's upper windows.
What I could see of the place was as follows.
On Monday the top three office lights were on but no one was in there. The main room downstairs was lit but I never saw anyone in there. Honestly though, I did not look long.
On Tuesday, in the main room there were approximately five people sitting in a circle in chairs. I can not tell what they were doing but it looked like a conversation of some kind.
The back of the building was much less maintained. There was a staircase at one end of the building leading to a steel door. There were a number of small parking lots. One was labelled no parking, members only. I did not see any clubs so I do not know who was allowed to park there. The window I saw the other guy look through was covered in steel mesh. I never got real close to it, but from what I could see, it looked like an old storage room.
The building is fairly deep so I believe that the beauty shop has the front and Scientology has the 2nd floor and an area behind it.
There was nothing of note to take pictures of on the back of the building. the brick was aged and a bit worn but other than that, a brick wall with some windows on the 2nd floor, all with no lights.
— Garumpf
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As an ex long term staffer who read and unfortunately took Hubbard's writings and goals literally, my "best" years were as Admin Course Sup/Word Clearer, then later pockets of time on research projects, reading Hubbard's private goals for INCOMM, ASI and quite a bit of the Int Base "strategic" level Hubbard traffic.
My nightmares are still, "How to do as Ron said."
The nightmare is Hubbard's massive writings, he's laid out, for the followers to "step up" and join staffs of these "Hubbard organizations" and "wear his hat." "Do what Ron says" and do it like he says and for the long range goal of essentially alleviating the "case" of humanity and make the world a better place.
This really is such a spread out operation, this Hubbard empire of basically getting the Hubbard quackery, aka "the tech" of the pseudo-therapy of Dianetics and Scientology, taught and people doing it so as to alleviate their "case" and make them into rehabilitated super souled people.
It of course all depends on whether Scientology at the end of the Hubbard quackery assembly line, is producing super souled rehabilitated persons. That's what is honestly not happening.
My nightmares all have to do with which "hats" the staffs are to "wear" and the problem is people honestly have a personal hard time wishing to be a Hubbard cog in this grand Hubbard operation.
People honestly are in secret doubt about it all, whether it is all actually doing as promised.
For the ASI tier of the Hubbard operation, in hindsight I've wasted so much time in the years since quitting, wondering how and who ought to hold the "top ranks" in the movement's various sub parts, doing these Hubbard goals.
Hubbard set up completely impossible and unachievable goals for the whole operation.
Because the quackery's failure is so blatant, all the rest of the parts of Scientology that are trying to "wear LRH's hat" in all their various sub goals LRH laid out, the whole thing is a moving wasteful mass of people's efforts.
The whole upper management of Scientology isn't religious.
The ASI whole wing isn't religious.
The buildings renovations and upkeeping, isn't religious.
The only thing religious about the whole Hubbard empire would be the exorcism/soul-freeing, which Hubbard made it taboo to discuss that OT 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 are even "soul freeing" procedures, to "handle" the leaking "case" that the invisible souls that infest humans are leaking into humans' minds to humanity's detriment.
Hubbard left such a massive impossible to achieve pickle for the staffs, at the strategic level, with so many people cross brow beating and blaming each other for the failure, never is anyone allowed to criticize Hubbard's quackery for its failure.
The exorcism OT 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 "soul freeing" failed Hubbard himself, when he back tracked to do the OT 7 exorcism/soul-freeing step which he determined he had some bothersome invisible souls still bugging him, which he was failing to deal with himself with his own exorcism/soul-freeing procedures.
Staffs are stuck in a continuing losing proposition in the Scientology subunits.
And it all goes back to the failure of the Hubbard pseudo-therapy and exorcism quackery not living up to Hubbard's false promises.
This movement cannot succeed and the best they can do is shuffle the money from their richer followers into renovating buildings on the futile "if you build it they will come" idea, which wasn't even Hubbard's strategy but a strategy that's been David Miscavige's leadership strategy.
The only advantage of this real estate strategy is that it fits with some of Hubbard's ASI strategies of using his money and the church's wealth to be safeguarded for the future, somehow wisely. Putting the "church's" wealth into long range places to maintain it's value, is about all the "church's" strategy for opening "Ideal Orgs." (The CST/Archives of Hubbard's "tech" goals, are funded by Hubbard's final estate and by the "church's" upward movement of its wealth also, goal being to "preserve" this Hubbard "tech" like preserving the Ten Commandments on tablets for later retrieval, but CST/Archives does the preserving in stainless steel plates and other methods.)
The quackery goals of Hubbard's are a failure.
Miscavige isn't a Class 12, he isn't an interned any level of "auditor" (an auditor is the pseudo-therapist/exorcist "hat" or job, the real deal practitioner of Scientology is the Scientology "auditor"), and this is like a church with the top managers NOT being also the top practitioners.
Miscavige is the top strategy paper pusher, not a practitioner.
This is also Hubbard's fault, for not only allowing the top paper pushers be Class 12 practitioners.
The whole "upper" ranks of the movement AREN'T practitioners, they are paperpushers, some very capable, but the movement doesn't run by practitioners.
The whole empire sub units of the movement ought really not even exist.
Better to let people interested in Scientology just have the quackery for the pseudo-therapy and the exorcism, and let them decide how and for how much of their time and money, they wish to do this quackery on themselves and each other.
---------------------------------
All the other trappings and units and staffing, and Hubbard's administrative strategic goals, are what's mired the Hubbard quackery in other directions.
Scientology ought just be the quackery, period, and interested people in this Hubbard soul bad memories alleviating quackery (the pseudo-therapy part and the exorcism/soul-freeing part) practice.
I wouldn't recommend it, but to me, in hindsight, the quackery is the subject and then all the Hubbard massive regulations and the cult bureaucracy is a dodge and waste of anyone's time to get drawn into.
To skim over the Hubbard quackery, the three key easily found free volumes to seach and find are:
a) Subject Volume 3
b) Subject Volume 4
c) The OT Volume
A person on Youtube called "Scientologeek" can direct people to how to find the Hubbard raw quackery "commands" . Most people will never do Scientology, good for them, but if they need to know what the quackery stuff is, the above three volumes is MORE than enough to get the idea of the Hubbard quackery.
Chuck Beatty
ex mainly cult paperpusher staffer training department staffer, 1975 to 2003
'Lights on, no body home' should be a new tag line for the 'Ideal mOrgs'. Thanks Garumpf, volunteer correspondents are the best.
I see the new mOrg in Melville is near a business called the 'Chambers of Hell', a 'ghost house'. It is somewhat near the Pilgrim Psychiatric Center. A New York state run psychiatric hospital. Hell and psychs as 'neighbors' (actually 10 miles away). Melville is centrally located for all those Long Island Clams. There is a nice aerial picture of the building at . https://www.longisland.com/news/03-16-24/long-island-church-of-scientology-purchases-melville-office-building-for-152-million.html