VIDEO: Watch this, and you will run to Scientology’s ‘spiritual mecca’

Sunday, we talked about how Scientology leader David Miscavige has reacted to the recent court cases in New York and Los Angeles that put Scientology under intense scrutiny from the nation’s media.

He isn’t taking it well was our conclusion.

And we’ve been telling you that Scientology has really struggled to recover from the pandemic. All of the normal indicators that we keep an eye on, and that Mike Rinder is so skillful at watching at his website, suggest that Miscavige’s organization is barely keeping its head above water right now.

But that doesn’t mean that Miscavige isn’t still sitting on a mountain of ready cash, and that he must still maintain the fiction that Scientology is healthier than ever. One of the ways he does this is through Scientology’s slick publications and videos.

These are aimed strictly at existing members, however, in order to continue to convince them that things are all right and they should still, for example, be making plans to come to Scientology’s “spiritual mecca,” the Flag Land Base in Clearwater, Florida, where they can drop a boatload of money on arcane practices that are only available there.

There’s this slick new promo for the Cause Resurgence Rundown, for example. The CRRD is one of our very favorite things about Scientology.

After watching this video, what would you assume the CRRD is, that it will fill you with so much energy and purpose?

Well, of course the video doesn’t tell you a thing about what the process actually is. And that’s because it involves you paying several thousand dollars for the privilege of running around and around a lighted pole.

We’re not kidding.

Originally developed as a form of torturous punishment in the hot California desert-like environment of Gold Base where Sea Org members who had run afoul of the organization were forced to run around a palm tree on soft sand for hours a day, now wealthy Scientologists actually pay good money to lace up some trainers and circle a pole in a massive domed room on the sixth floor of the Flag Building.

We know this, because way back in 2011 we published the plans for that building, and we could see the massive circular room and the lighted column that was designated to be at its center. We still have a rendering they made for it to show what it’s like for track suit-wearing Hubbardists circling in the otherwise darkened room…

Yes, that’s Scientology’s own rendering of what the CRRD is actually like. And we also found this admission on a Scientology website that didn’t like it when Lawrence Wright described the program (accurately, of course)…

The program in question is called the Cause Resurgence Rundown. It comes from L. Ron Hubbard’s research and is designed to improve a person’s abilities to translate thoughts into action. It is a purely spiritual practice, not punishment. And while it involves running, the Cause Resurgence Rundown is approached on a gradient (walking, then jog-walking and graduating to running when physically capable).

 Well, maybe you get some idea now why Dave is having such a hard time getting people to join and stick around. Three or four grand for the privilege of running around a pole for so many hours that eventually you have hallucinations from the exhaustion? Yeah, good times.

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Bixler civil lawsuit hearing moved to February

Now that the criminal trial of Scientology celebrity Danny Masterson has ended in a hung jury and a mistrial, we wondered what was going to happen to the separate civil lawsuit against him, Bixler v Scientology.

The same three women who are accusing him of raping them in the criminal case are suing Masterson and the Church of Scientology not for rape but for the harassment they say they’ve been through in the years since they came forward to the LAPD in 2016.

Those three women, known as Jane Does 1-3 in the criminal case, are also joined by Jane Doe 3’s husband and a fourth woman, Bobette Riales. The lawsuit was held up initially because Scientology managed to get it forced into its own version of “religious arbitration,” but an appeals court overturned that in January. Since then, the civil lawsuit has been on hold pending the criminal trial’s result.

Most recently, Judge Steven Kleifield had scheduled a new hearing for December 13, with the assumption that the criminal trial would be completed by then. But now that a mistrial was declared, Kleifield has continued the civil case to a hearing on February 7.

That should be enough time to learn if the District Attorney’s office is going to retry Masterson. A status conference in the criminal matter is scheduled for January 10, and so the DA’s office may decide pretty soon whether it’s going to sign off on a retrial.

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Kirstie Alley and Scientology

Rolling Stone asked us to write a piece about Kirstie Alley’s career in Scientology after the news of her death of cancer at 71 was revealed by her children. We then talked about it on a short video that went out to everyone. This morning we’re linking to it again. And here’s the YouTube version….

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Thank you for reading today’s story here at Substack. For the full picture of what’s happening today in the world of Scientology, please join the conversation at tonyortega.org, where we’ve been reporting daily on David Miscavige’s cabal since 2012. There you’ll find additional stories, and our popular regular daily features:

Source Code: Actual things founder L. Ron Hubbard said on this date in history

Avast, Ye Mateys: Snapshots from Scientology’s years at sea

Overheard in the Freezone: Indie Hubbardism, one thought at a time

Past is Prologue: From this week in history at alt.religion.scientology

Random Howdy: Your daily dose of the Captain

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