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-Short Attention Span Theater-
Scientology nearly ready to unveil Super Power
2006-05-09
Clearwater, Fla. - Matt Feshbach believes he has super powers. He senses danger faster than most people. He appreciates beauty more deeply than he used to. He says he outperforms his peers in the money management industry. He heightened his powers of perception in 1995 when he went to Los Angeles and became the first and so far only "public" Scientologist to take a highly classified Scientology program called Super Power. Where in L.A. did he do this? "Just in Los Angeles," is all Feshbach will say. Super Power is that secret.

Under wraps for decades, Super Power now is being prepped for its eventual rollout in Scientology's massive building in downtown Clearwater. That will be the only place worldwide where the program, much anticipated by Scientologists, will be offered. A key aim of Super Power is to enhance one's perceptions - and not just the five senses we all know - hearing, sight, touch, taste and smell. Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard taught that people have 57 "perceptics." They include an ability to discern relative sizes, blood circulation, balance, compass direction, temperature, gravity and an "awareness of importance, unimportance."

Church officials won't discuss specifics of Super Power. But Feshbach and another prominent Clearwater Scientologist who, like Feshbach, is a major donor to Super Power's building fund, provided some details in interviews with the St. Petersburg Times. A group of former Scientologists who worked for the church on a campus in California where the program was in development also described elements of it. Super Power uses machines, apparatus and specially designed rooms to exercise and enhance a person's so-called perceptics. Those machines include an antigravity simulator and a gyroscope-like apparatus that spins a person around while blindfolded to improve perception of compass direction, said the former Scientologists. A video screen that moves forward and backward while flashing images is used to hone a viewer's ability to identify subliminal messages, they said.

Hubbard promised Super Power would improve perceptions and "put the person into a new realm of ability." He believed it would unlock abilities needed to spread Scientology across the planet.
Posted by:anonymous5089

#23  CAROUSEL, from "Logan's Run", where anyone over age 30 is ceremonially laser-zapped to death while in ecstasy???
Posted by: JosephMendiola   2006-05-09 20:49  

#22  How much does it cost?
Posted by: Tony Blair   2006-05-09 20:15  

#21  As I know to my sorrow, common sense can't be enhanced. It's one of those gotta be born with it thingies. :-(
Posted by: trailing wife   2006-05-09 19:52  

#20  All these senses and they don't enhance the most important one. Common sense.
Posted by: Mike N.   2006-05-09 17:35  

#19  I'll bet I can get rid of Thetans for about $19 a head and I'll use American shaving cream.
Posted by: Sam Walton Super Retailer   2006-05-09 17:20  

#18  I gather you get a thetan for red cars if you are looking at a red car and somebody frightens you. However, you can get rid of the thetan for red cars for like 50 bucks.

This gave a friend of mine an idea. He would sneak up behind Scientologists, grab them and scream "THETANS!!!" at them, hoping to give them a thetan about thetans. He figured it would cost them at least $5,000 to get rid of one of those.

I wonder if Tom Cruise was trying to transmit his thetans to Oprah by jumping up on her sofa and screaming at her?
Posted by: Anonymoose   2006-05-09 17:01  

#17  I had a college roommate we lost to Scientology - they stripped him of every dollar and made him a cult slave.
Posted by: Frank G   2006-05-09 16:48  

#16  One setback occurred when the church checked back on the staffers who had been through Super Power. It turned out, Hines said, many had left the church - hardly the expected outcome


Apparently the sense of smell IS ENHANCED!
Posted by: Frank G   2006-05-09 16:46  

#15  So does this mean Kirstie Alley won't have to go to Jenny Craig anymore?
Posted by: tu3031   2006-05-09 16:26  

#14  CF, right you are. You can train yourself to see polarized light (no real value, but it's pretty).

It has nothing to do with Scientology.

As the late Ron B Hubbard once said: "I bet that there are so many suckers out there that if I establish a church, I can rake in millions" ... So it was said and so it was done.
Posted by: twobyfour   2006-05-09 16:11  

#13   Scientology leaders have been compelled to redesign the building's interior repeatedly to make it a crown jewel

SuperPowers -- can't decide on a colour scheme. Sounds pretty scattered and directionless to me for a bunch of super leaders. Should add a training unit on interior design and project planning - freezing change cases.

Posted by: Shuns Uleating3851   2006-05-09 15:55  

#12  Able to leap Oprah's couch in a single bound. Faster that a paparazzi's speedflash. Is it a man, is it a loon, is it an extraplanar thetan? Why it's Scientology Man.
Posted by: ed   2006-05-09 15:36  

#11  Scientologist Ron Pollack, who donated $5-million to the Super Power fund

My super powers tell me that all of those Pollock jokes over the years should have been Pollack jokes instead. Us non scientoligists may be psychic, just not the best spellers.
Posted by: rjschwarz   2006-05-09 15:16  

#10  There are 57 Perceptics in the State Department!
Posted by: Sen. Islin   2006-05-09 14:43  

#9  I'm sure a boxer or martial-arts person has 'super-powers' to see an oncoming punch, hit, or kick which I coundn't even concieve of.

Just as a baseball hitter has 'super-power' to track a oncoming 100MPH baseball in order to be able to hit it with a stick.

Or a race-car driver or jet pilot has a 'super-power' to be able to percive objects while traveling at a high rate of speed or an experienced police-officer able to percieve and remember people faces or descriptions.

Or I have a 'super-power' to notice bugs in other people's perl code (while being blind to the obvious errors in my own...).

Nothing special about it. Just a matter of training and experience.
Posted by: CrazyFool   2006-05-09 14:42  

#8  Oh - and by the way: 57 "perceptics."

Is that like the 57 secret herbs and spices in Heinz 57 Sauce?
Posted by: OldSpook   2006-05-09 14:36  

#7  PT Branum put it best: There's a Scientologist sucker born every minute.

The only super power here is the super power of enriching the bank accounts of the perpetrators of this fraud at the expense of the super gullible.
Posted by: OldSpook   2006-05-09 14:35  

#6  "Super Power" sounds a lot like "Super Genius". Of course, there's already one of those:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wile_E._Coyote
Posted by: Omomotle Ulomoque5726   2006-05-09 13:25  

#5  ...awareness of importance, unimportance.

Tom Cruise failed the last part.
Posted by: DarthVader   2006-05-09 13:22  

#4  My favorite perceptic is "Perception of having perceived (past and present)." Like, what?
Posted by: Secret Master   2006-05-09 13:22  

#3  Scientologist Ron Pollack, who donated $5-million to the Super Power fund

Well, OK, as long as he didn't waste the money.
Posted by: Matt   2006-05-09 13:09  

#2  My body Thetans tell me this is all BS.
Posted by: Xbalanke   2006-05-09 12:55  

#1  As the light turned green, the boy bolted into the street, ahead of his mother. Feshbach perceived a pickup bearing down on the boy, driven by a young woman. He yelled and saved the boy's life by a quarter of an inch, he said.

Wow! Super Power!

Shaw would not say how much the program will cost. Upper levels of Scientology training can run tens of thousands of dollars.

Wow! Super Duper Power! Especially if your Scientology's banker...

Posted by: tu3031   2006-05-09 12:54  

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