Dear Ex-Scientologist,
I would like to know the answers to the following questions (if you have several answers to any one questions, please include them):
1. What in Scientology made you first suspect everything wasn't in reality quite how it sounded like in theory (such as in LRH books)?
Many facts over time.
LRH in hiding.
In 1983 I read an article talking about an LRH son that sued the Church stating that his father was dead or held against his will. That appeared as a communication problem, why didn't simply LRH meet whit his own son and clear up the matter? LRH falling under the PTS Type C category seemed a joke at the time!
Prices
Prices and the sliding scale of discounts didn't fit with my way of help people moving up the bridge. It seemed a marketing gimmick and it brings the oddity that the more money you have the less you pay for services, because if you buy big packages you get 40%-45% discount, but if it happens to be not so wealth and have just the money for your next service, you end up paying much more, and that does not make sense from a clearing the planet viewpoint. So I said to myself "I'll stop buying anything until I've earned enough money to buy a highly discounted package" and maybe these last years in which I was not taking services prepared me to see the Church in perspective.
MSH disappeared.
They had people who only knew Ron very little to talk about his 'greatness' at events. Yet MSH that was his wife was kept hidden.
Translations
In 1996 I worked for a short time on translations.
The official reason translations were redone was because of 'earlier incorrect translations" so all translations needed to be redone. One question arose in me: 'Why not simply correct and improve the old ones?' No way, all translations needed to be redone from scratch - that was the order. (There was also a big push to do them quickly and I saw a lot of overt products due to not properly hatted or experienced translators - I finally doubt new translations done by volunteers were any better than earlier translations done by FOLO TU staff more than a decade earlier. I remember the HCOB title 'Meter reading TRs" translated as "Read the meter in TRs" by an inexperienced translator.)
Doing myself the translation of a tape I went into a sentence that was not easy to render in my language. So I decided to read how had been translated earlier, I took an earlier translation transcript and found that point in the text, and it was saying something different... No way the sentence can be translated that way, there is more text added in this old translation - how squirrel! I listened again the voice of Ron, what was saying could not produce the old translated text. I went in the Qual library and looked up the English transcript of the tape, it was different! I picked up the reel of the original conference and listened Ron's voice and yes, it was saying something different in that point! Listened a couple of times again the new tape and the old one and it was perfectly clear that an editing occurred - a sentence had been taken away from the old tape and a few different words entered with Ron's voice (or and identical one).
I rationalized at the time: "They removed the difficult parts" and "removed words as 'Franchise' and to put 'Mission' instead" and many other cosmetic changes. But the holiness of LRH words was gone to me and a piece of Scientology history was gone with it.
Websites
The web site campaign was a good thing. Its purpose, as explained, was to hide entheta websites by creating many pro scientology sites. When somebody would search 'Scientology' a lot of personal scientology sites would come up with success stories and contact details. I did my site too, it was easy.
Few years later a friend scientologist told me how easy it was to find confidential material on internet, just put OT3 or other similar keywords in a search engine. I gave it a try, not out of curiosity about confidential content, but just to know if it was so easy. The search engine returned many links containing reference to confidential materials. How is that?
I looked a the content meta tag of my scientologist site and words as OT3, ot levels, etc.. were not included, yet to fool search engines they should have been there. And I was instead surprised to see in the content meta-tag of my own site the name 'David Miscavige'. What the hell is doing his name in my site meta-tags? Why the church wants to hide his name on internet and not the confidential materials? What he wants to hide?
I didn't read anything confidential but wrote a KR about the web sites found containing confidential materials including the links and some link had the word xenu in it - I noticed what a strange name it was for a website. I didn't get any reply to my report.
The pre-configured meta-tags of scientologist personal sites pages:
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="Scientology, David Miscavige, L. Ron Hubbard, religion, Mr. David Miscavige, scientology, Dianetics, SCIENTOLOGY, Mr. Hubbard, LRH, DIANETICS, Ron Hubbard, Ron, Scientologists, Hubbard, auditing, SCIENTOLOGIST, Church of Scientology, L. RON HUBBARD, philosophy, success, wins, child, children, Scientology auditing, churches, church, Drug-Free, Scientology procedures, communities, Environmental, What is Scientology?, Drug Prevention, Volunteer, Criminality, charitable, drug rehabilitation, drugs, education, faith, family, literature, human rights, drug abuse, minister, marital, sermons, public awareness, illiterate, intelligence, literate, marriage, medical drugs, mind, moral code, rehabilitation, religion, religious, self-confidence, society, soul, spiritual awareness, spiritual being, survive, thetan"><META NAME="description" CONTENT="THE DESCRIPTION OF YOUR PAGE GOES HERE. Be sure to mention words such as Scientology, Dianetics, L. Ron Hubbard, etc.">
</HEAD>
IAS prices
IAS prices are just too much. Why somebody should be willing to donate money with no exchange and service? LRH wanted everybody to move up the Bridge? Then why to give the money to the IAS instead giving it to the Church for the next service?
David Mayo
Always puzzled me – how and highly trained auditor and OT, the personal auditor of LRH can become an SP? (And so did many I now know). I asked this question a few times and the answer was that 'The more OT you are, the bigger your overts are' and that doesn't answer the question.
PR at events
Huge stats, special effects, glitz, and impressive scenography at events. Everything was going wonderfully at church events, yet everything was in danger to be lost at IAS events (unless we donate more money).
Psychiatry DVD (recent)
If the Church really wanted to expose crimes of psychiatry would have made a documentary, like the ones found on Discovery Channel, not a show with special effects and flashing images. Special effects means fiction, means show. If the Church really wanted to spread the info contained in that horror show would have priced the DVD at cost or little more, 1 or 2 euros – not 16 euros. 16 euros (or 15 dollars in the US) means PROFIT.
(That horror show also states that Bin Laden is a product of psychiatry! That can only believed by Scientologists.)
2. What made it obvious to you everything indeed wasn't like you had been lead to belief?
Going on internet and find the truth.
I got could not understand why IAS membership prices become so high and I got interested at what was the HASI annual/lifetime membership price when Ron was around. I googleed and found it to be 15-30 USD for annual and 150 USD for the lifetime in 1978.
But I also come across the web site of a scientologist friend of mine, Robert Dam, OT5, who left AOSHEU and happily continued services at a Ron's org. That web site clarified many things and gave info about Mayo, MSH, Susan McDonalds, Ron's orgs, the doubt announcement of Michael Leonard Tilse. Thank you Robert!
With internet I've found out many LIES
SO#1 lie
I was writing to LRH between 1983-1986 and I was getting answers. However I've found on interntet that Miscavige and Starkey in more instances told to courts that there was no way to originate a communication to LRH. That mean the Standing Order #1 line was a fake – others were answering using his name.
The 'LRH willingly dropped his body to continue research' lie.
Thanks to Robert Vaughn Young, who was there, for exposing time, date, form and event of that lie coming into place.
3. What kept you there in spite of this realization?
The idea that only the Church had a way out and to OT and had the monopoly of the tech. I was in amazement after watching the 'The Beginner's Guide to L. Ron Hubbard'. I was so happy to know that tech was also delivered outside!
Also disconnection policy – fear of my family brought to pieces.
4. What was the final straw that made you leave the org/staff/Sea Org?
For a couple of months I had the desire and hope to find a way to correct the Church so I searched what other people did try to better it.
I've found so many stories of people who were in a far better position at a far better time to be able to straighten things and got expelled, suppressed, fairgamed for that.
That was the end.
Slowly I moved away from the org. I really believed we were saving the planet from a catastrophe. It came with a huge loss the realization that it was indeed a scam.
Slowly it became acceptable to be 'without a planet to clear' and happy to still have a job and friends in the wog world.
Please also note whether you were public, staff or Sea Org.
SO in the eighties, then public.
Mark