Flag Building

The Flag Building, formerly known as the Super Power Building, is the largest building in Clearwater, Florida, and is owned by the Church of Scientology. The building was built principally to deliver Scientology's Super Power Rundown, a special program intended to train someone to use all of their 57 "perceptics" (senses). Construction began in 1998 but halted in 2003. The city assessed daily fines to encourage progress and completion of the building, suspecting that the Church was deliberately delaying construction and using the incomplete project as a fundraising cash cow while diverting millions of dollars in donations to numerous other real estate purchases and construction projects around Clearwater. It is estimated that at least $145 million was raised by Church fundraising towards the project. The building finally opened on November 17, 2013.

The Flag Building, formerly known as the Super Power Building, is the largest building in Clearwater, Florida, and is owned by the Church of Scientology. The building was built principally to deliver Scientology's Super Power Rundown, a special program intended to train someone to use all of their 57 "perceptics" (senses). Construction began in 1998 but halted in 2003. The city assessed daily fines to encourage progress and completion of the building, suspecting that the Church was deliberately delaying construction and using the incomplete project as a fundraising cash cow while diverting millions of dollars in donations to numerous other real estate purchases and construction projects around Clearwater. It is estimated that at least $145 million was raised by Church fundraising towards the project. The building finally opened on November 17, 2013. Scientology Flag building, north elev.jpg|Flag Building (north side) Scientology Flag building, south and east elev.jpg|Flag building (south and east side) Flag building and Fort Harrison Hotel, north elev.jpg|Flag Building (left) connects with the Fort Harrison Hotel (right) via sky bridge over Ft. Harrison Avenue

Fundraising

The building was financed through a fundraising effort called the "Super Power Expansion Project." A fundraising letter sent to Scientologists in March 2002 described the purpose of the project: Contributions to the project were on a sliding scale with "titles" fancied among adherents as prizes according to the level of donations. These ranged from the starting level, "Flag Supporter" (a $1,000 donation), to the mid-ranking "Master Builder of Merit" ($500,000) and so on up to the "Legion of OT Meritorious" ($7,500,000). According to a Scientology magazine published in September 2007¹, Scientologist actress Kirstie Alley was ranked as a "Founding Member" of the project, indicating a $250,000 donation. The actress Catherine Bell had also contributed and was ranked as a "Double Cornerstone Member" (twice the normal "cornerstone" donation of $35,000 - i.e., $70,000). The project's July 2004 "Cornerstone Newsletter", listed 1,218 members¹ contributing a total of just under $89 million; by 2007, the total had risen to over $142 million. Some individual Scientologists had given up to $5 million each. Scientologists contributing to the project were given a number of benefits depending on the level of their contributions, including "gold validation pins" and "Super Power rings", "exclusive membership to the Key Contributor Lounge in the new mecca building created specially for these stellar contributors", and fee reductions or priority status for Super Power courses. "Cornerstone Members" were promised a 40 percent¹ discount and that their names would be engraved on a plaque inside the building. A 2011 investigation by the St. Petersburg Times newspaper found that the Church of Scientology had raised at least $145 million from its members for the Super Power Building project, vastly more than the building's ostensible cost. In one week alone, $23 million was raised – almost half the entire cost that had been stated in 2009. Ex-members have complained of being subjected to intensive demands for funds and have suggested that the Church purposefully delayed completing the project so that it would remain a "cash cow", though church spokesmen have strongly denied this. In January 2013, a Californian couple who had donated more than $420,000 to the project sued the Church of Scientology for fraud and deception, charging that the Church had kept the building incomplete "to use it as a shill to induce further payments from members, just as they did the plaintiffs".

Perceptics

The Church of Scientology's in-house magazine Source has promoted the program as being aimed "to shift the creation of a new civilization into overdrive". According to Source, "this is the powerful series of rundowns that will move every Scientologist, at any level of The Bridge, into an entirely new realm of ability. It's here one will progress through the drilling stations of the Perceptic Rundown. And when it comes to the future, here's the likes of which has never even been conceived of on this planet." The 57 "perceptics" (senses) addressed by the rundown are: According to the Church of Scientology, the Flag Building would contain specially developed equipment which would "expand on technology developed by NASA to train astronauts" designed to exercise and enhance an individual's "perceptics". The machines would include such things as an antigravity simulator, a gyroscope-like apparatus that spins a person around while blindfolded to improve perception of compass direction, and a video screen that moves forward and backward while flashing images to hone a viewer's ability to identify subliminal messages. According to Marc Headley, who worked on developing the "perceptics", Scientologists would have to undergo testing on each of them. For smell, for example, there are "hundreds and hundreds of vials of distinct smells that did not evaporate. You name it, bananas, peppermint, sunflowers, any smell that you can think of, they had it in a vial. Some of the smells were very similar, like oranges, tangerines, orange peel, orange juice, you had to tell the difference and until you could name each and every one correctly, you did not finish this perceptic." Leaked blueprints of the building's interior showed facilities such as a "time machine", an "oiliness table", a "pain station" and an "infinite pit". Scientologists undergoing Super Power training in the building would be "spun on a gyroscope-like wheel, spend time in a sound chamber, sniff vials emitting fragrances and experience changes in gravitational pull." According to Headley, the "insanely loud" anti-gravity simulator was nicknamed the "Barfitron".

References

External links

Church of Scientology Flag Service Organization Google Maps - satellite image of Super Power Building Inside Scientology Slideshow featuring the Flag Building—The New York Times

Text derived from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1373253798 under CC BY-SA 4.0; modifications have been made.