Super Power Building - Purpose and Funding

Purpose and Funding

The purpose of the Super Power Building has been stated as providing a dedicated center for delivering the Super Power Rundown, a high-level Scientology training course that has not yet been released. The Super Power Rundown was described by Scientology's founder, and science fiction writer, L. Ron Hubbard, as:

"A super fantastic, but confidential series of rundowns that can be done on anybody whether Dn Clear or not that puts the person into fantastic shape unleashing Super Power of a thetan. This means that puts Scientologists into a new realm of ability enabling them to create a new world. It puts world Clearing within reach of the future. This is a parallel rundown to Power in Saint Hill which is taken by the Dn Clear. It consists of 12 separate high power rundowns which are brand new and enter realms of the tech never before approached. Power is still very much in use on the Grade Chart but is for those who didn't go Clear on Dn."

According to the Church of Scientology, the building will contain specially developed equipment which "expand on technology developed by NASA to train astronauts" designed to exercise and enhance an individual's 57 "perceptics" (senses). These machines will 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.

The building is being funded through a "Super Power Expansion Project." A fund-raising letter sent to Scientologists in March 2002 described the purpose of the project:

With the world in such a state of degradation and dismay, the only hope to reverse the dwindling spiral on Earth is to speed the release of Super Power.

As you know, the 12 Rundowns of Super Power were designed to handle the barriers to this planet's Clearing. By releasing this technology, we will unleash the Super Power of every being who completes these rundowns and they will built the New Civilization so vitally needed.

The rapid completion of the funding and construction of the new building, guarantees this Cleared Earth.

Contributions to the project are on a sliding scale with "titles" that are fancied among adherents awarded as prizes according to the level of donations. These range 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 2007, Scientologist actress Kirstie Alley is ranked as a "Founding Member" of the project, indicating a $250,000 donation. The actress Catherine Bell has also contributed and is 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", lists 1,218 members contributing a total of just under $89 million.; by 2007, the total had risen to over $142 million. Some individual Scientologists have given up to $5 million each.Scientologists contributing to the project are 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" have been promised a 40 percent discount and that their names will 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."

In 2012, Tony Ortega of the Village Voice released leaked blueprints of the Super Power Building that reveal architectural features of the building including a recreation of a deck on the Apollo. The blueprints include features such as a "time machine" and an "Oiliness table".