LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Hollywood megastar Tom Cruise, 60, is mostly known for two things - his ability to perform jaw dropping stunts and his allegiance to the Church of Scientology. As the ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ actor has been taking immense risks by doing the the stunts for his upcoming ‘Mission Impossible’ movie, did you know the two things are actually inter-connected? Or one may even conclude, Cruise’s ability to be able to pull off such stunts were due to Scientology.
As the fans of the ‘Knight and Day’ star can see him hobnobbing with the British royalty with grace and wishing King Charles on his coronation with confidence, one might even forget that Cruise once said he was dyslexic. However, Scientology boosted his confidence to achieve such feats.
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How did Tom Cruise learn reading?
In 2009, the ‘Jerry Maguire’ star told Spanish magazine XL Semanal, “I asked myself if I was normal or an idiot. I would try to concentrate but I felt anxiety, frustration, boredom.” Cruise was recalling the time when he was diagnosed with the learning disability. He was seven when he was diagnosed with dyslexia.
“I’d try to concentrate on what I was reading, then I’d get to the end of the page and have very little memory of anything I’d read. I would go blank, feel anxious, nervous, bored, frustrated, dumb. I would get angry. My legs would actually hurt when I was studying. My head ached. All through school and well into my career, I felt like I had a secret. When I’d go to a new school, I wouldn’t want the other kids to know about my learning disability, but then I’d be sent off to remedial reading,” Cruise said in detail to People’s Jess Cagle in an interview.
Cruise continued, “When I graduated from high school in 1980 I was functionally illiterate,” reported the Daily Mail. However, as he said, it was Scientology which finally helped him overcome his limitations as he then “learned to read perfectly” using their methods. “Nobody gave me a solution and I wanted to know why the system had failed. Finally, as an adult I learned to read perfectly through the method of [Scientology founder] L Ron Hubbard,” he said.
The ‘A Few Good Men’ star then elaborated about how he learnt to read. Cruise said, “In 1986, the year ‘Top Gun’ came out, I became a Scientologist. A friend gave me a picture book on Scientology, and through this I was introduced to the writings of L Ron Hubbard, who had founded the religion.” Speaking highly of the founder, he added, “Mr Hubbard was also an educator who had been researching the field for decades. He had found that literacy and comprehension levels were declining worldwide, so in the 1960s he had developed “Study Technology.””
“It pinpoints three barriers to learning: Lack of mass (you can’t learn to fly a plane by just reading about it—you have to sit in the cockpit or at least have a picture of a plane); skipped gradients (trying to master skills or information without mastering or understanding that which comes before them); and misunderstood words (the most important one and a cause for stupidity),” said Cruise, who had backed out from training as a pilot for ‘Top Gun’ because of his learning disability.
Cruise further said, “Once I started focusing on those problems, everything fell into place. I had a lot of catching up to do, but that was it. I had run the gamut, hiring specialists for myself privately, bringing in tutors and hearing why I would just have to “learn to deal” with being dyslexic.” He further claimed that as he read Hubbard’s book, ‘The Basic Study Manual’, he was able to cure himself of dyslexia.
What is Scientology?
According to the Oxford online dictionary, Scientology is “a religious system based on the seeking of self-knowledge and spiritual fulfillment through graded courses of study and training.”
Eugene V Gallagher and W Michael Ashcraft wrote in the book ‘Introduction to New and Alternative Religions in America’, Scientology’s beliefs and practices were not only based on extensive research but also lies in the practical application of the education by the practitioner. Personal experiences of the followers were always encouraged, As Hubbard said, "For a Scientologist, the final test of any knowledge he has gained is, 'did the data and the use of it in life actually improve conditions or didn't it?'"
Tom Cruise and Scientology
Cruise was first introduced to the Church of Scientology by his first wife Mimi Rogers in 1986. Since then, the faith has been a major defining factor of Cruise’s life. It was also reported that one of the major reasons behind Cruise divorcing his ex-wives, Nicole Kidman and Katie Holmes, was Scientology. While Kidman and Cruise’s two adopted children, Connor and Isabella, are followers of the same faith as their father, Suri, who is Cruise's biological child with Holmes does not reportedly have any relationship with the actor at this moment.
