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December 17, 2005
Inside Scientology
For those of you looking for reassurance that Hollywood superstar Tom Cruise is a regular guy who practices a little-known but reasonable religion, don't read today's fascinating profile in the LA Times.
The piece details Cruise's lengthy training sessions at the Scientology Church's retreat outside L.A., and only instensifies our bizarro view of him and the religious cult to which he belongs.
The article also profiles church leader David Miscavige, who has had a long and intense "relationship" with Cruise (hmm...), and who frankly reminds us more of an upscale David Koresh than anyone else, as well as deceased church founder and science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard, or "LRH" as he is known to the faithful.
Apparently Cruise has advanced far further on his spiritual journey than most of his fellow Hollywood practicioners, and is now seeking "OT VII", or Operating Thetan VII, one of the highest levels of Scientology training, which will reveal to him the secrets of human suffering. We wonder if among those secrets is having to watch Battlefield Earth, a suffering experience if there ever was one. Such advanced Scientology training, by the way, conveniently costs members hundreds of thousands of dollars. Well, Cruise can certainly afford it.
Cruise's progression in the religion also explains his open disdain for psychiatry (remember his feud with Brooke Shields and confrontation with Matt Lauer over mental health treatment), a disdain shared by Hubbard, whose beliefs were "dismissed as quackery" by the psychiatric profession.
As one former church member put it, Cruise is effectively channeling Hubbard from the grave. Our response to the whole piece -- yikes.
Posted by houtopia at December 17, 2005 11:29 AM