Do you have to be rich to be a Scientologist, or do they offer "sponsorship" for the destitute and needy all the way up to top level clear status?

 

Do you have to be rich to be a Scientologist, or do they offer "sponsorship" for the destitute and needy all the way up to top level clear status?

I was in Scientology for twenty five years.

This is a pretty common misconception. To buy Scientology services as a public you will at some point need a lot of money, at least hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions to donate to Scientology.

However, in reality many people in Scientology are not wealthy. Some people are public and buy courses and services that cost hundreds of dollars or thousands and never do the entire training or auditing available simply because they can't afford it. They may do little things like extension courses and read books on their own and hang around for decades.

The vast majority of people in Scientology are not wealthy. The staff in many cases in Scientology orgs and Sea Org members often are very poor people. Many Sea Org members rely totally on the Sea Org for housing, food, clothing and all the basic necessities of life as they have no other savings or income in many cases.

Several thousand people are Sea Org members and several thousand more are staff members. Often for every rich person in Scientology there are hundreds of poor people who are not even thought about by the rich ones. Many rich people don't even acknowledge that the legions of poor people are there to provide them with the services they purchase but most people in Scientology are poor, by a significant margin.

And to be clear, probably less than one percent of people in Scientology make it a significant amount up the bridge. Many people don't make it even halfway to the clear state and of those that do even less make it to the upper level of OT III for example.

The thing that outsiders don't understand is that the upper levels are not attained by most people. I was in Scientology for twenty five years and the people who made it to clear generally went no further, the people who made it to the upper levels had great wealth and were extremely rare and the vast majority of people had little money and never made it to clear. Some people who are middle class or upper middle class spend their life savings to get to clear but that's often where the affordable road ends for them. Most people simply cannot afford the upper levels even if they empty their bank accounts, donate the college fund, max out the credit cards, work sixty hours a week, and sell their houses. Scientology is just far too expensive. You may need several hundred thousand dollars to do your upper levels and most people don't have any way to get that kind of money.