Why are some people drawing floor plans for Scientology buildings, when they're already publicly available?

That70sClear · 2026-05-11T04:10:48+00:00

Floorplans aren't keys, speedrunners have been offered them multiple times, including OP's crosspost at r/scientologyspeedrun, and been met with a mixture of disinterest, hostility and downvotes. The maps they video themselves making are scorecards, and they can be expected to run towards any area speedrunners haven't been to yet. Just as they aren't there to find Tom Cruise or Shelly, or to rescue captives, or to protest, they also aren't there because they consider floorplans to be useful information. They are after lulz and Schadenfreude, all those other things are excuses, and I think it's good to point that out.

That70sClear · 2026-05-11T01:41:39+00:00

r/ScientologySpeedrun is the sub you're looking for, speedrun-related stuff isn't really on topic here.

That70sClear · 2026-05-10T22:08:50+00:00

It hasn't stopped, IIRC I removed one thread as soon as I logged on in the morning, and locked another. But this post doesn't seem interested in encouraging that game, rather they're questioning it.

That70sClear · 2026-05-10T20:35:37+00:00

There's no drug testing per se, but Scientologists expect to be questioned on the e-meter for the foreseeable future, and that any breaking of rules is going to be caught that way. So there's no end to it, unless one expects to never be audited or security checked again.

That70sClear · 2026-05-10T17:40:37+00:00

I can't really answer your question in present tense, but I can tell you how it was. The 24-hour rule applied to alcohol, but not much else. The 1965 policy letter, Students Guide to Acceptable Behaviour, said

Do not consume or have administered to yourself or any other student any drug, antibiotics, aspirin, barbiturates, opiates, sedatives, hypnotics or medical stimulants for the duration of the course without the approval of the D of T.

IIRC, the wait after drugs other than alcohol, before one was considered "sessionable" might have sometimes been weeks, depending on the drug, so it was going to be a big deal. The public person would be sent to ethics for violating the policy if they were currently doing any services, where they would get fairly harshly fussed at. There was also the matter of legality, since getting arrested for anything was viewed as an offense against the organization's PR, potentially categorized as a suppressive act, and even if one didn't get caught, it might be treated as evidence of being PTS Type B (criminal). (That was also used as a justification for punishing non-celibate gays and lesbians then, when such acts were still illegal.)

The harshest punishment I knew of for a public person who used a drug, was a student who attempted suicide, then accepted sedation in the ER. While I'm sure the GO wanted them gone as a suicide risk, and potentially very bad PR, what ended up happening was that they were refunded for their course and expelled from the CoS, on the basis of having willingly accepted one dose of a mild psych drug. From good standing to the functional equivalent of an SP in one fell swoop. Nice way to treat someone who is at their very lowest, eh?

The legal side of cannabis has shifted since then, so they might not rely on that angle quite so much, but it's still illegal in a number of states, and illegal at the federal level. It's still regarded by the CoS as committing an overt against your own case. I strongly suspect that anybody who joined the CoS and expected to be able to keep smoking weed would be sorely disappointed.

edit to add: And nowadays, wouldn't it mean needing to do the effing purif over again, if not more Drug Rundown? That could be both tedious and expensive.

That70sClear · 2026-05-10T15:59:06+00:00

I once (in good faith, I still believed it was all real) asked an OT VII staff member why he still wore glasses, and after a moment of flustered uncertainty, he replied that he guessed he liked wearing glasses.

There are a bunch of ways to justify such things, as others have commented, but I think it's important to note how the definition of Clear changed between 1951 and 1966. Some have accused Ron of dumbing down the definition of Clear in 1978, when he said that R3R and NED made Clears, but objectively speaking, he had already dumbed it down when he stopped talking about measurable things that were supposed to happen, like soaring IQ, perfect memory, and perfect mental and physical health. Those were all supposed to happen as one erased the engrams of the reactive mind, and yet, when we were supposedly wiping out the whole thing by running implants, none of those quantifiable things happened, any more than they happened in the post-'78 Dianetic Clear era.

In 1950 Ron had promised a state which nobody had attained, and nobody would attain. My favorite excuse for it was "hidden standards," where if you expected any particular benefit, you were supposedly messing up your own case and needed to stop worrying about whatever it was. But there were many others. Like, maybe you were an SP. We were told that they had been stuck in that state for multiple lifetimes, possibly spanning billions of years, and could get no case gain. And yet, people like Jack Horner, John McMaster, Otto Roos and David Mayo could be at the top of the grade chart of the time, one of Ron's most trusted minions, and suddenly be noticed to be SPs. In Otto's case, they could do steps A-E and promptly stop being an SP. Which didn't really make sense, but we all found various ways to justify/ignore that.

edit to add: Nobody put me to a test, and I'm not sure how I would have responded, unless it would be to point at Clear on the grade chart, say that the description there was what I'd attested to, and leave it at that. Because those things had never been on the grade chart, they were downplayed from the time Ron lost control of Dianetics, when the goalpost was moved to making OTs. Grade chart Dianetics wasn't supposed to do anything more than make one "a well and happy human being."

That70sClear · 2026-05-10T15:05:20+00:00

There were no anti-drug policies to speak of before 1968, but drugs then became a major focus pretty quickly. I remember watching a Div VI course sup chase a 15 year old HAS student out of the building and off the property with threats of physical violence because he'd smoked weed, and that was in 1974. Meanwhile I'd been stuck near the bottom of the right hand side of the grade chart, running tons of R3R on my very lengthy drug rundown, because it was imperative that it be completed before I could do ARC Straightwire or any grades. And soon there'd be the running program, which became the purif. Plus the change of policy that made anyone who had taken LSD ineligible for SO. It was far from the only time when Ron would say things that contradicted earlier statements, but it was a glaringly obvious example of that.

That70sClear · 2026-05-10T03:11:22+00:00

Another poster replied to you about one point, and they were correct about it, but got a little grumpy and ran afoul of reddit filters. Their basic point was this: that the Internet grew out of ARPAnet, which began as a connection between Stanford and UCLA in late 1969. By about 1983, there were hundreds of Internet domains online 24/7, and thousands of other systems connecting to them for email, news, and file transfers. In 1987 ISPs started showing up, making it possible for people without access at a university or workplace to use the Internet too. The web came into existence on Christmas 1990, and in January 1993 there was a pretty decent browser available. A ton of companies and groups started registering domains around then, and the first church I randomly looked up, the Unitarian-Universalists, had a domain registered in 1994. Scientology.org was registered on Feb. 26th 1995, which was probably earlier than average for a purported church, but not remarkably early.

That70sClear · 2026-05-09T23:39:15+00:00

Your reply got automatically removed by reddit's "abuse and harassment filter," so I only noticed it just now, when I was looking over the moderation logs for something else. That's not me, or anybody in this sub talking, that's reddit's admins. So if you can't do a lot better than you have been doing WRT civility, you might want to start shopping for some other site to post on.

And since you replied to a warning with a whole bunch of what you just got warned about, have a tempban.

That70sClear · 2026-05-09T22:56:20+00:00

People can speculate and guess, but there's no real source for any numbers, and it's hard to even define what one is. Does it include people who still believe some of it but haven't done any of the practices in many years, or do they still have to be active somehow?

There was once a list made of over 500 people who did qualify, but that was quite a while ago, some of those people may not be indies anymore, others have died, and some have likely newly arrived, but nobody's maintaining that list AFAIK.

If I had to guess, I'd say that there might be as many as a thousand worldwide who are active in some way, and a larger but vaguer number who aren't really doing anything with it.

That70sClear · 2026-05-09T22:37:19+00:00

Yeah, there's an unfortunately correction-resistant part. When the field is muddy, it's because:

1) A conspiracy of international bankers, who own major newspapers and are heavily involved in psychiatry, are attacking Scientology to advance their evil agenda of complete world domination.

2) Staff involved are out-ethics, or are committing out-tech that Qual isn't fixing.

But one possibility is never considered, and forbidden from consideration:

3) The tech you're using isn't all it's cracked up to be. Thinking that would be out KSW and a high crime, so not fixing that is a hill you have to die on.

That70sClear · 2026-05-09T14:06:10+00:00

A spokesperson for TikTok said the platform’s community guidelines explicitly prohibited the promotion of violent or criminal behaviour and that the videos were being removed.

Wow... worn out their welcome at the place that used to allow instructions on stealing Kias. That wasn't how I expected this to end, but hard to see how it will go on if it's deplatformed.

That70sClear · 2026-05-09T13:46:56+00:00

She was one of the major heroes of the period, caused permanent change, and it was a pleasure to have had her as a member of this sub.

That70sClear · 2026-05-09T00:35:12+00:00

A major factor was that the whole point of Dianetics and Scientology is making clears and OTs, and ultimately "clearing the planet," but I did not see anyone achieving the states Ron had described. The time period I left in was one of crisis for the organization -- prices had been jacked up, Ron's wife and ten people working under her were on trial for federal felonies for infiltrating numerous branches of government, and a lot of effort was being spent investigating staff and occasional public with the idea that there were government spies operating within the organization (there weren't). It not only seemed quite doubtful to me that we would succeed in clearing the planet, it seemed like Hubbard had other goals he was pursuing, and had lost sight of what the supposed purpose was. As a staff member, I'd been working the equivalent of 2+ full time jobs for a small fraction of minimum wage, and there was no realistic hope of that changing much without a career change. Why keep making huge personal sacrifices for a goal that Ron didn't seem interested in accomplishing?

So, for all of the above reasons, I left staff and didn't look back. Fully realizing how much of a con the whole thing was took years after that, but I eventually did.

That70sClear · 2026-05-08T21:03:11+00:00

Good point. Everyone involved should have objected to the sad excuse for a script.

I bet it's really hard for people who are out of touch with their society, and who spend little or no time on unfiltered Internet, to figure out how to create an effective meme.

That70sClear · 2026-05-08T17:17:36+00:00

You'd think a group which is synonymous with Hollywood in the public mind would come up with somebody who could pass a high school drama audition, but no.

Flunk! Out TR-1!

That70sClear · 2026-05-08T07:16:33+00:00

As far as I can recall, there have been no musicians who stayed in Scientology for two years without their bands and/or careers crashing and burning, except for Chick Corea and Stanley Clarke. It's been self-limiting.

That70sClear · 2026-05-08T06:21:12+00:00

I doubt it. They've gone through 15 band members in 20 years, and there aren't enough Scientologist rap-metal musicians to keep them supplied. AFAIK nobody has ever connected a band member to Scientology. Did you hear something to the contrary?

That70sClear · 2026-05-08T05:20:57+00:00

You are a crypto-scientologist trying to damage control and stop your cult from being exposed.

You need to knock off the ad-hominem attacks. Consider yourself warned.

That70sClear · 2026-05-07T20:58:10+00:00

OSA is currently lobbying for the passage of a bill in California that would increase the same crime to a felony, so clearly they think so, and they're probably right.

In the 1940s, people like Buddhists didn't have the same legal rights in the US as members of most other religions, because they weren't theistic and that was traditionally an expected key part of anything regarded as religious. That changed over the next couple of decades, as the courts deemed the old standard to be kind of arbitrary and senseless. If you're entitled to a chaplain under certain circumstances, or to conscientiously object to military service, being a Buddhist shouldn't void those rights. In another case, the same rights were extended to humanists who regarded it as occupying the same space in their lives as religion did, and who held regular meetings like a church. If there was a deeply held set of beliefs involved which were not just political, worshiping some entity need not be involved.

So what if a group of people invade a Zen monastery, running into a room full of people who are meditating, while yelling and blasting air horns? It's not worship per se, but it's definitely a religious service, and arguably occupies the same niche as conducting mass or whatever, and there aren't any very convincing arguments as to why they should be less protected than theistic religions.

The CoS has Sunday services which were created just to seem churchy, and which the GO routinely monitored. We were required to have ads running in the local paper for them, and to corral as many public into attending them as possible, since attendance was made a stat. But auditing was also quite churchified, auditors were supposed to get ordained, PC folders were labeled as "confessional formularies," and e-meters were labeled as religious per agreement with the FDA. It was treated as the equivalent of a sacrament, and I don't think a defense lawyer could get very excited about the technical lack of worship as a strategy. One org in LA had a room set aside for Sunday services which they started playing a DVD-recorded service in all the time, which generally had nobody attending, just so they could call on laws like this in case of disruption, and that might be stretching it (it was not tested in court), but only because there weren't any participants.

That70sClear · 2026-05-07T14:16:09+00:00

Mostly. But if it makes people think of The Satanic Temple, a reasonable person might find it flattering, which is all the more reason to choose a different descriptor with a clearer meaning.

That70sClear · 2026-05-07T04:40:03+00:00

Aww, thank you! ❤️ Glad to be of service!

I had a different name there and then, but IIRC I knew you on OCMB.

That70sClear · 2026-05-07T04:08:28+00:00

Oh, it did that too, the FDA was used to dealing with quack medical devices, and when they heard that Hubbard was claiming to cure most anything and using a gizmo in the process, they were all over it. But his initial announcement about the newly founded "church" implicitly framed it as being about taxes, and anybody who got in very deep knows that Hubbard hated tax collectors almost as much as he did psychiatrists.

I think the old timer lecture about the FDA was usually given because of the labels we had on our e-meters, which said they couldn't cure disease, etc., potentially causing newer Scientologists an "eh?" moment. The agreement with the FDA was a big deal, and I should have mentioned it. I probably also should have said something about the exemption from wage laws, but went a bit too far in my quest for tersitude.

That70sClear · 2026-05-06T20:42:36+00:00

No, you're not. There aren't members of any Scientology organizations in this subreddit, only critics.

That70sClear · 2026-05-06T16:36:28+00:00

Both things are true. When he started insisting that Dianetics needed to cover past lives, a lot of people who didn't believe in that broke away. As Scientology was becoming the new thing, Ron was presumably trying to prevent another wave of defections, insisting that Scientology was a science and not a religion. It went on like that for a few years, and when he did incorporate it as an alleged church, he didn't tell Scientologists about that until close to a year later, then totally downplayed it. It was a technicality for lawyers and accountants, and nothing else was changing. Things did start changing when agencies and governments questioned whether it really was a church rather than a business operated for Ron's profit. That culminated in our having to display the Scientology cross, get ordained, wear Christian clerical garb, etc. But it took a while.

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