Scientology success: 'I became at peace with being controlled by a man'

Another success story out of Scientology’s UK headquarters, Saint Hill Manor, makes its way to us thanks to our friend Apostate Alex.

This time, a woman named Gillian is talking up her wins on the Upper Indoc TRs Course, a somewhat introductory experience for someone who is starting out to become a Scientology auditor.

We’ve had some great fun learning about the Upper Indoctrination Training Routines Course in the past that we wanted to remind you about, but first let’s see what Gillian has to say about the things she learned on Upper Indoc TRs at Saint Hill…

Gillian | Upper Indoc TR Course

I was called one day from the Org and told they have an amazing twin for me to start Upper Indoc. I was very excited but at the same time slightly dreading it. I have always been a very independent woman, and certainly never needed to rely on a man or be told what to do from a man so “How would I ever get through?” I thought to myself! We went through the TRs together and it was truly the most magical experience.

Doing the drills and the wins I gained were incredible. I became at peace with being controlled or told what to do by a man.

My confront in life went way up. My control and ARC with my kids is pleasant and smooth. I’ve been out to a couple of restaurants with friends and family who have been trying to get the waiter’s attention for a while and I’m like “watch this Tone 40!” I looked straight at the waiter and he instantly turned around straight to me and we got our order. One of them was a bit bedazzled as she obviously didn’t know why she turned when she was on her way elsewhere. Even I got a fright at how Tone 40 I was.

For the first time ever am I so certain that I could be an auditor, in control of someone else and get a product.

We’re very curious to see what our former Scientologist readers have to say about some of the things Gillian expressed here, about being “in control of someone else,” and specifically about being “at peace with being controlled or told what to do by a man.”

In the meantime, hearing again about Upper Indoc TRs, we thought way back to the first time we interviewed Marc Headley, in 2009 while we were at the Village Voice.

He had sent us a review copy of his book, Blown for Good, which was just coming out then. We thought it was terrific (you really should get a copy and read it if you haven’t already) and we were excited to ask Marc some questions about it.

Specifically, he had described the time in 1990 when Tom Cruise came to Int Base to get some auditor training, and Marc was chosen to be his guinea pig. Why? Because although Marc had been in Scientology since a young child, he had spent most of his time doing work for the church and not getting any actual Scientology processing.

He was a blank slate for Tom to practice on. But in the book, Marc didn’t really describe what, exactly, they had done during those sessions. So this is what happened when we asked him about it…

Headley says that Cruise took him through something called the “Upper Indoctrination Training Routines,” or “Upper Indoc TRs,” in the abbreviation-filled jargon of Scientologists.

And what did those entail?

“You do a lot of things with a book and a bottle,” Headley says. “It’s known as the book-and-bottle routine.” Cruise, he says, would instruct Headley to speak to a book, telling it to stand up, or to sit down, or otherwise to move somewhere.

“You do the same with the bottle. You talk to it. You do it with an ashtray too,” he says. “You tell the ashtray, ‘Sit in that chair.’ Then you actually go over and put the ashtray on the chair. Then you tell the ashtray, ‘Thank you.’ Then you do the same thing with the bottle, and the book. And you do this for hours and hours.”

Let us get this straight. Tom Cruise, who had already starred in Risky Business and Top Gun and Born on the Fourth of July and Days of Thunder, the man who, at the time, was 28 years old and perhaps the biggest movie star in the world, spent hours and hours of each day, for three straight weeks, instructing Headley to speak to inanimate objects, requesting that they get up and move on their own, and when they didn’t, told Headley to move them anyway, and then thank them?

“For hours and hours,” Headley says.

In God’s name, why?

“It was to get your intention over to the bottle.”

Your what?

“It was supposed to rehabilitate your ability to control things. And to be controlled,” he says.

And there was more. It involved doorknobs.

“Tom would ask me to find a place in the room that I could easily communicate to. I was supposed to look around the room, and then tell him the place I had picked out. I might say, ‘the doorknob.’ And he’d tell me to over there and touch it. And then he’d say, ‘OK. Now do it again with another place.'”

Headley says that after a couple of weeks, he did begin to wonder about trying to make objects move by talking to them. But this was Tom Cruise, and not someone you would question.

That was part of why Headley had been chosen. He was young and green, and had few contacts outside the base.

“It couldn’t be someone who might run off the next day and tell the National Enquirer that Tom Cruise was telling me to talk to a bottle for the last three weeks,” he says.

As Headley points out, this kind of instruction is quite common in Scientology, and you can even find the routines spelled out in places on the Internet.

We can only hope that someday Gillian is able to leave Scientology and, like Marc, look back on Upper Indoc TRs and laugh.

And speaking of Apostate Alex, over at his website he has some great new photos of construction going on of the giant tent at Saint Hill for this year’s IAS gala, as well as a video sent out to church members telling them to set aside the entire month of October to come to the event, whose date has not yet been revealed.

This is despite the fact that Scientology has not applied for a permit to put up the huge temporary structure, and a showdown with local government officials seems all but unavoidable.

ADDITIONAL: We received this very helpful description of the Upper Indoc TRs from a reader…

I’ve done the Upper Indoc TRs Course twice, once on GAT I and GAT II (Golden Age of Tech I & II), on my way to becoming a Class VI Auditor (and doing the Saint Hill Special Briefing Course).

What Gillian is describing in the restaurant, that she used ”Tone 40” to control the waitress and make her turn around and take her order, is the exact, word-for-word example used in the training film that you are made to watch at least 50 times during that course. I have heard so many people basically “lie” when they use that exact example of how they “controlled the waitress.” It starts to become rather hilarious over time when everyone somehow miraculously has “gained the same ability in the exact, word-for-word way.”

Basically, in the Upper Indoc TRs Course, you are made to control another body completely, in every way, walking back and forth between two walls, and doing so physically and rather violently (anything goes to move the other body to the opposite wall….literally). You do this for hours over many days, if that’s what it takes, to “break” the other person to finally give in to being controlled by you. You have to bring a change of clothes to the course, because after several hours, you are soaking wet with sweat from basically “wrestling” the other person around the room from wall to wall. The other person finally “gives up” and gives complete control to you to move his or her body wherever you want and many people do this because they finally realize this is the only way for the “torture” to end and the only way to complete the course.

Then this newfound “ability” to control another and be completely controlled yourself, is hailed as being a huge “WIN” and you are Certified and awarded and given accolades for achieving such an amazing feat. It’s really bizarre. (Can anyone say “Nazi Control Course?”)

I hope that helps you and your readers to better understand the course.

— A Loyal Reader

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