Notice: Fredric Rice may have removed segments of the replies given to questions if they contained copyrighted materials. After a very short while, Scientology "experts" refused to answer questions and started cut-and-pasting copyrighted cult propaganda. Additionally I removed URLs in some of the replies, and left them in others. And it's also important to note that eventually the unfortunate "Greg Churilov" cultist was ejected from askme.com for his typical Scientological behavior.

Subject: Screaming at Scientology on Colorado Blvd?
Answered by: formerscientologist
Asked By: Anonymous

Anonymous asked this question on 5/4/2000:

I used to work in a sandwhich shop that was pretty close to an office of the Scientology cult that was located on Colorado Blvd. along where the Rose Parade is run every year, here in California.

One day I was with a co-woker as we walked past the place on our lunch break. I never would have gone in alone but since I was with my friend, we thought we would run in and see what it was about. We had worked close to the cult for years and never gave them much thought.

There was some little kid... couldn't have been more than 10 year old or so... that met us at the door. The kid was filthy and stank, desperately needing a bath. That was enough for me to want to leave but my friend whispered to me, "in for a penny, in for a pound." Whatever that means we stuck it out and started to get a lot of smooth talk about taking that stress test that they're always trying to sell people.

The kid's parents... at least I think it was his parents... came in and tried constantly to seperate me and my friend. We wouldn't let ourselves be seperated so we spent all the time in that little front hallway thing that the cult had. We were trying to politely leave when we hear some woman just screaming loudly.

We could see this woman sitting in a chair leaning over an ash tray screaming like an insane person at it to 'rise up!' She turned red and just kept screaming at the ash tray! One of the parents of this kid that was trying to seperate us walked quickly over to the woman, said something, and looked back at us extremely embarrassed.

My friend and I got the hell out of the place. I admit that we were very scared that these insane people would follow us out and we walked quickly away. After half a block or so, we both started shaking and laughing and we hoped that the people inside wouldn't recognize us at work since some times they would send people in for lunch or some times dinner.

What's that all about? Screaming like someone possess of Satan at an ash tray, for God's sake?!!!???

formerscientologist gave this response on 5/4/2000:

I can see you were not given a very good impression of Scientology. Keep in mind that if everyone had the same impression, that there would be no Scientologists.

Sometimes Scientologists are their own worst enemies.

Normally when you walk into a Scientology church, you don't smell children who are overdue for a bath.

Neither will you see someone screaming at an ashtray.

The "screaming at an ashtray" has been done time to time as part of a person's auditor training. I guess the drill is designed to help people break through their inhibitions while learning to execute commands.

There is a training drill named "Tone 40 on an Object"

It's purpose is "To make student clearly achieve Tone 40 command. To clarify intentions as different than words. To start student on road to handling objects and preclears with postulates. To obtain obedience not wholly based on spoken commands."

By "Tone 40", they mean to get one's intention across while giving a command.

However the bulletin I have makes no mention of screaming as part of the drill. It does instruct the student to tell the ashtray to stand up.

There may be a variation of this drill written somewhere else, but I haven't seen it. All I know is that people scream at ashtrays from time to time.

I've never seen anyone scream at an ashtray in the church. However a very unreliable source, my step-father, suggested that if I scream at the ashtray, it would eventually obey me. So, in the privacy of my own home, I had done a lot of senseless screaming with absolutely no results. No, I wasn't insane, just very gullible.

Further facts about this criminal empire may be found at Operation Clambake and FACTNet.

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