Critical Q&A

This week, it’s answers about cognitive dissonance in cults, woke vs wokeism, how to audit body thetans and a lot more. Enjoy!

(1) You’ve talked about a number of cults on your channel, but one I have not yet seen you mention is the United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors. It is a small group that moved around the US, and was most recently in Georgia. I became aware of it years ago when one of its members was hired to work in my office. Its leader, Dwight York, was convicted in 2004 of child molestation and other crimes and sentenced to 135 years in prison.

The aspect of the cult that I found incomprehensible was how many times its lore changed. It went through African, Islamic, Egyptian, Native American, Jewish phases before landing on being descendants of aliens from the planet Rizq. York himself changed his name and title, and the name of the group, many times as well.

Some of his followers did leave because of the changes in doctrine.  However, others stuck with him, and are still sticking with him, despite all the evidence that he was making it up as he went along. I can see how people could get drawn into a high control group and gradually buy into stranger and stranger beliefs as they became more and more invested, but when the leader keeps changing the doctrine, how can his followers continue to believe?  I’d be interested in any light you could shine on this.

(2) I was wondering if you had any thoughts on this “war on woke.” The anti-work crowd is starting to get really culty. No one could even define what it means. It’s a thought stopping cliche that’s becoming insidious. The Silicon Valley Bank went under because they “went woke”? What does that even mean? What is a woke bank? I was wondering if you had any insights to this phenomena that you would like to share. 

(3) I am not sure if you have talked about this before, but how the hell do you audit a body thetan? How similar would that be to auditing a different person? From what I remember (and I could be wrong), you hold the cans yourself and read the meter and adjust your auditing accordingly, right? How exactly can you tell if you are auditing yourself or the thetans? When you audit someone else, are you auditing their thetans (perhaps unknowingly if you are not OT), or how exactly does this all “work”?

(4) I was wondering what some of your favorite books are from ex-Scientologists that may not get as much of a look-in these days compared to the more popular ones. I just finished reading Jenna Miscavige’s book but hadn’t heard it mentioned all too much in the last few years. I’d be very interested if there’s a resource or database that compiles all the books written by ex-Scientologists, though I’m not sure such a thing exists. What are some of your favorites?

(5) Words like Clear, reasonable and squirrel have very different and serious meanings for Scientologists. Are there any other words or ideas that also have been redefined in this way?