[Applause] okay so Chris Shelton will be our speaker today ecology the history and future of a destructive cult like many of us his family got him into a religion and many of us same way we grew up either Catholic or Baptist or whatever because we didn't know any better at the time and it seemed like the parents knew what they were talking about so that's what you did so he spent 25 long years in this cult and he is now going to share that experience with you which i think is going to be very interesting to you because it is quite a quite an organization and based on money as many of them are actually it's not just Scientology but we all know their businesses I think many of us do he has a book out now of course and I started reading it I would suggest you get a copy of it back there he'll be signing the books after his talk and so you might look forward to that he blog and he has a YouTube and on one of them he's got on the on the YouTube he's got critical thinker at large so he has broken away from his indoctrination and he quotes this this quote these are the insidious monsters in our heads making us do ourselves in he will share with us now has that experience and give Chris a big hand I'm here there we go hey everybody thank you very much for inviting me having me out here it's it's always fun to get out and sort of talk about the experience of what my life was so Scientology is a big subject there's no way we're gonna cover all of it in an hour but I'm gonna try to give you a sense of the experience of it first I'd like to ask it has anybody here seen the HBO documentary Alex Gibney's going clear okay good or any other documentaries or videos or anything about Scientology some yes some no okay I just want to kind of get a sense of of what you know what you guys know about it already so I don't want to cover ground you've already covered I made start with myself just so you know who I am and why I have any credibility standing here talking to you about this I was my parents got involved with Scientology when I was very young when I was about 2 or 3 years old and they had actually gotten divorced and so we would be in a separate households and that sort of thing and my my uncle actually got my dad involved and they did the beginning introductory services Scientology is a church it is a recognized religion in the United States and in many other countries in the world but it is a it follows a kind of a business model more than a church in that it offers classes and counseling and it offers those things for fixed donation rates so if you go into the Church of Scientology of Phoenix and say what do I do they're going to say well you're going to do a class or you're gonna do our counseling services and you're going to pay us a donation for that and what they have is a series of services then they they put this together as an analogy of a bridge from one's current spiritual state of awareness as we all are now to this higher state of awareness and ability as a spiritual being because the Church of Scientology says that you me all of us are spirits or spiritual beings and the word that they use for that is a Phaeton from the Greek letter theta so that's the that's the term that they use for that and so we're all fate ins you don't have a Satan it's not like you have a soul you are a Satan that's the idea and Scientology or ron Hubbard claimed that through his discoveries and researches he not only proved that man is a spiritual being which he didn't really but I'm just telling you what they say that he but he proved this and could could show you through subjective experience that this is true and that through this processes of Dianetics and Scientology your spiritual awareness and ability will improve an increase so that you sort of they don't put it in this term but the best way to describe it simply to you is so you will attain a god-like status and state that's sort of the carrot that is offered by Scientology in an ultimate sense they don't explain all this to you on day one I'm kind of giving you the the real deal on it right and what they tell you when you first walk in is well is there something about your life you'd like to change or improve whether it be you know your marriage is not so great or you're not dealing with your kids or maybe you have work problems or maybe you're introverted or you have a hard time communicating with people or whatever it is that you feel you want to change or improve about yourself I think there's very few people in the world who think that their life is totally great everything's wonderful and I don't need anything and for those people who do think that they're never going to get involved in Scientology because Scientology's never going to be able to sort of cook them in but the hook that they get people in with is is there something you want to change or improve with my parents getting back to that they were divorced obviously that was not a happy thing with little me you know running around and my dad thought that his commune occation could stand some improvement and he was kind of an angry guy and this kind of thing and so he thought maybe this would maybe this would be something that could help him and one of the very first services Scientology offers is a communications course and and that's what's called the communications course and tons of people who got into Scientology did so through that course and it offers a series of practical drills and some some theoretical information about how communication goes and how you could improve it so you when you know when you talk to people you look them in the eye and yeah and you speak and and they hear you and when somebody says something to you you answer them I mean it's kind of common sense stuff but it's all put together in this class and when you do the class you go wow I really feel like I can communicate better this l ron Hubbard really knows what he's talking about this is this is good stuff right and then they go well that's just the beginning we got a whole lot more where that came from right that's just the tip of the iceberg and you go really and they go yes and that's how my parents got involved right my dad actually wrangled my mom in she did the communications course they then did some counseling together Scientology offers a kind of marriage counseling and they got back together and I got remarried and so I you know being yay tall at the time was just kind of oh I didn't have a family now I have a family right and with parents and so my entire childhood was Ray I was raised with these ideas and principles of Dianetics and Scientology though the term there's a lot of terminology there's a lot of loaded language is what it's called really in in in this subject and when you're raised with that just like if you're raised as a Christian or a Catholic or Buddhist or whatever this is how life is I mean I wasn't it wasn't my place to question this information or say well dad there's no such thing as a reactive mind I like that that didn't occur to me when I was six years old so I just kind of grew up around this and all of you know as my parents got involved with it we lived in California this was in Pasadena California as my parents got more and more involved in it they started working for the church in Pasadena and my dad actually ended up heading up the Pasadena organization there this was in the in the nineteen mid-1970s so all of our friends were Scientologists right so we had to have parties at home and Scientologists right my childhood friends who weren't from school who I met non scientology people at school but the children of the Scientologists they were the people I was hanging around with right so it was a kind of kind of a bubble world a bit right that everybody accepted that l ron Hubbard was a genius this is how he's viewed in Scientology he's not worshipped there isn't like you know some kind of L ron Hubbard but it's but it's a reverence there's a there's a reverence towards the man and he's definitely considered a genius among a giant of amongst geniuses people in Scientology think that that l ron hubbard was a guy but he was a superior gifted amazing guy who who did things and accomplish things and and learn things that no one else in history ever had learned right and so there's a lot of credence given to his words it's one of the things in Scientology that you that l ron hubbard it's kind of infallible you know if there's something that he is he's given time he gave thousands of lectures he wrote tons about 20-25 books in all that material if you are studying it in the classrooms of Scientology and there's something you disagree with or you go well that doesn't make any sense they're the person the teachers the supervisors who work with you will work you over until you understand it so it makes sense to you right because it's not that l ron Hubbard doesn't make sense it's not that this doesn't make sense it's not that this isn't 1000% true it's you ain't getting it right and you're gonna be worked over until you do get it and I actually did that job for for quite a while so there's a whole methodology to it okay so that was kind of my upbringing and when I was 15 years old you know I was sort of it was sort of like my parents were doing the Scientology I wasn't doing it but I was around it right until I was 15 we had moved up to a place called Santa Maria California which was about an hour north of Santa Barbara and one fine day in the summer between my sophomore and junior years of high school my dad says why don't you go down to the church and find out what it is for yourself okay that sounds reasonable so I at my dad was working with at the at the company that they had had started was driving down to Santa Barbara on a regular basis and so I went down with him one day expecting that I was kind of blase about it I was 15 I was kind of like yeah I'm you know I have a teenage boy right I could you know you knew your parents aren't going to really teach you a whole lot when you're 15 and but I thought well okay I'll go down and check it out and I figured it was going to take about 15 minutes and I'd you know kind of be done and that was that but what they do and this is kind of and I think you'll find this interesting is they they have a personality test and this is the this is one of the the most common ways that they draw people in it's 200 questions yes/no or sort of maybe and the questions are things like do you browse through railway timetables or dictionaries or phone books just for pleasure that's one of the books what's one of the answer to questions right or do you you know do you find yourself worrying about needless worries often right and you're kind of like well good you know yes know me I don't know right you answer these questions there are all kinds of crazy questions like that they're very kind of general sort of some of them are very ambiguous questions and what you get from that is a graph of your personality and one of the one of the traits on the graph is happy sad one of the traits on it is Kim is in communication or withdrawing right sort of an introvert and extraversion thing or responsible not so responsible right and there's these various traits and they put it all on a graph to and it's called the Oxford capacity analysis never had anything to do with Oxford but it sounds really good and and you and you get this very scientific looking graph right and pseudoscience is a really big part of Scientology I'll just say that right now and this graph is one of these things but you look at it you go wow and they then sit down with you and the test evaluator goes over with you this graph now the whole point of this is not that this is a scientifically accurate analysis of your personality which changes but day to day by the way because if you take the test every day you'll get a different graph every day depending on what mood you're in but the idea with this is to find this get you talking get you to open up you tell them what is it you want to change or improve about your life what are your fears what are you anxiety is what are your concerns and upsets and once you open up like that and you and the person who's doing the test evaluation with you is usually pretty good looking usually very open smiles varying you know very easy to talk to and very practiced in this and the idea is to establish trust so that you'll open up to them and tell them some secret of yours or something about yourself that you wouldn't necessarily just tell in a social conversation and by doing so and I hoping yourself up to that you then say okay this is something I'm now going to trust you with like I you know my marriage isn't going so great they go I totally get it it's it's it's not uncommon at all but guess what we have something that we can offer you here that will handle that not make it a little bit better not maybe sort of make your life a little better with that no we're gonna make that problem absolutely vanish from your life Scientology is that good right and you go really and they go oh yeah and it's usually fifty bucks a hundred bucks it's not that much not that big of a deal to do one of the very first services for me when I was fifteen I walk in there well I'm kind of a I was kind of a nerdy kid never had a date had a hard time talking to girls this was this was you know I was in high school right and you know I kind of had dorky looking glasses I dressed funny and so it really didn't take a whole lot of work for her to figure me out right but being 15 years old and thinking that you know I I knew things and and nobody else did I was amazed that she read me like a buck right she sits me down the communication is out the bottom right and she goes wow you look like you're having a hard time talking to girls and I'm like what how did you know that right that's impossible that you could how can you possibly know that about me right and and then she and then when she put the cap on it of well we have we have a class that you can take that will deal with that I just about fell out of my chair like what you know cuz nobody offers this kind of thing to you in the real big wide world and my parents had been involved with this so there was already a mindset in my head that there was validity to this it wasn't just coming in off the street cold so I was like wow I got to sign up for that course right now right so I called my dad dad I gotta do this right now right and and we arranged it and figure it all out and before too long I was taking their communications class and then I was taking their study class and then I was taking their basics of Scientology class and then I was taking their ethics class and then I was taking a class about how to use that that a meter the electro psychometry right and and all these classes and then I did this thing called the purification rundown and by this time I I was graduated from high school this took me two years to get through all this stuff and going down there fairly regularly and then I did this purification rundown which is sitting in the sauna for five hours a day detoxing total nonsense complete pseudoscience and I've actually done an entire video breaking it all down but but it but within the world of Scientology they really think that that drug toxins and LSD and this kind things stay in your body Hubbard asserted this with great deal of authority and so so Scientologists will sit in a sauna for five hours a day day after day after day after day taking mega doses of vitamins and flushing out these toxins right which is not even what's going on but that's what they think is going on so I did that and I hadn't I didn't have really have a big drug history or anything so um so it only took me about five or six days and I finished it and I you know you kind of do some exercise and get up and about and sit in a sauna and sweat for a while and you know you can kind of have a nice physical reaction to that initially which is what I had so I thought hey wow I feel great and they said great now that you're done with high school and you've only gone to college for three weeks and you really don't know what you're gonna do with your life you should join staff here and work for us and save the world and there is nothing more dangerous to the world than a young person who thinks they're gonna save it so I of course signed up duped it out with my parents because while they were Scientologists they had done the staff thing and they kind of knew the organization was a little maybe had some things to be not so great about it but they relented they signed the contract as you sign a legal binding contract that you will work for the church for a period of two and a half or five years and in exchange for that the church will give you free Scientology services you give your whole life and I did that for eight years actually at the Santa Barbara Church of Scientology and I did executive work I did coursework where I supervised people in classes that was mostly what I did and then I sort of supervised Dazz an executive all of the counseling and classwork and that was a struggle because when you work for the Church of Scientology when you sign that legally binding contract you are a religious volunteer it is not it is non it Scientology's 501c3 tax-exempt nonprofit organization officially while its raking in billions of dollars through its services but the staff are not the ones who see that money all the money goes up it doesn't come back down within the organizational structure of Scientology I mean right so you have its upper levels which is where l ron Hubbard was initially when he died in 86 David Miscavige officially took over the church and he's been leading it ever since he's a bit of a tyrant and and he is his life is very well taken care of by all that money but the staff of Scientology are considered religious volunteers not employees there's no Bennie's there's no 501 or there's no 401 K there's no set salary none of that the money that you get working for the Church of Scientology as a staff member at say the Phoenix Church or the one in Santa Barbara where I worked or the one in Milano or New York those religious volunteers are paid a proportionate percentage of the income that the church makes that week so if the if if in Santa Barbara let's say we had a week where we only made you know three thousand dollars of income we got about buck for pay that week right that was how the percentages worked out the most I ever got paid in a one-week period for when I was working in Santa Barbara was about a hundred and fifty bucks so for eight years I struggled because obviously you're not gonna make a living doing that so I was working but they demand that you work full-time and all the policies and things that Hubbard wrote for the staff say look it's a proportionate pay system if you guys put the work in and make it succeed you'll get paid lots of money and I want you to get paid lots of money and so this is how this should work but that's not how it works but you you're kind of in this bubble world again where Scientology is you know you've been convinced as a public person as a person who's doing services that this stuff really works it's really great you've had a subjective experience or two with it where you feel like this is really something important and great and now we're gonna take it to the level of saving the world and you know of course and I have to say you know as somebody who grew up in it and then as a 17 year old getting recruited into it as a staff member critical-thinking wasn't in the picture right life experience wasn't in the picture and that's where a lot of the Scientologists that are still around that's when they came in and that's how they came in my story is not unique right the college-level college-age students high school age students more college level really is where a ton of Scientologists mostly came from as their initial demographic back in the 60s and 70s right so now they're kind of older you have second generation third generation Scientologists and that's kind of how it's sort of sustaining itself so again critical thinking not being a big part of the picture it wasn't really in my head to question what was going on I didn't have any other frame of reference and a lot of Scientologists don't and when you buy into this kind of a belief system that you are an immortal spiritual being you've been around for a near infinity infinite period of time in the past and you will continue to live into the future forever what's one lifetime yeah you're making some sacrifices it's no big deal because we're saving the world right so you just kind of go with it and Hubbard says over and over again that in the policies of the church and this is reinforced over and over again that the success of the church is on your shoulders it's on you right so there's the the idea becomes if it's not succeeding and not making it it's not Hubbard's fault it's not the organization's fault guess whose fault it is so after eight years of this I was working a full-time job outside of the church then I'm working 40 hours a week at the church so my life was weekend nights only was kind of my only time off to do my laundry do my shopping and kind of chill rest the time I was working and I was very dedicated right this is gonna work I'm gonna save the world and some when I was twenty five said this isn't working right Santa Barbara's not expanding Scientology's not expanding the way it should be I mean come on guys we're gonna this is the stuff you know this is and so I decided I needed to do more not less and you know and you look at it now you go wow what a foolish thought but at the time it really made sense right so I joined the C organization and that's SCA C is an ocean the sea organization and that is the core clergy heart of Scientology it's about 5,000 people worldwide and it is the group that is living breathing Scientology 24/7 it's a paramilitary organization they model themselves after the Navy there's a lot of history to this which I really don't have the time to get into today with everything I want to cover but Hubbard created it in the mid-60s and it was sort of his own little Navy and it was sort of the most dedicated Scientologists and they would assign a symbolic but for them real idea of a billion-year contract it's obviously not legally binding it's the symbolic thing but you pledged a billion years of service to Scientology I'm gonna do this lifetime after lifetime after lifetime and we're gonna make this happen right because Scientologists in the at the core level really do believe that they're going to Salvage planet Earth right they're gonna save mankind they're gonna they're gonna rid the world of insanity war and criminality do away with those things just like you would do away with your communication problems or your marriage problems the same kind of thing but it's on a planetary scale and then they're gonna go off and they're gonna do it to another planet and another one another one until the entire universe is been brought the message of Scientology right that's the idea that's that's the that's the really hardcore thinking of course like I said none of this is given to you on day one at all you build up to this right I'm just kind of dumping it on you guys they would never tell you all this stuff if you just walked into the Phoenix Church on day one and said what are you guys doing here you know they'll talk to you about your marriage problems or something so I joined the C organization which me I moved to Los Angeles and many of you might have seen the big blue buildings that with the Scientology sign on it this is a common picture that you see it's a it's a base it was the cedars-sinai hospital that was purchased by the church in the mid 70s they painted all the buildings blue so it would stand out more they put a big Scientology sign on the top of the big of the highest building of it and that base is called a Sea Org base right like a military base and I worked there for 17 years until December of 2012 which is when I finally got out and I did a whole bunch of stuff I was an executive over all of the delivery of Scientology across the western United States organizationally they have a church management body and that management body is the see organization that's that's part of what the see organization does another thing that the see organization does is it delivers all of the confidential upper-level secret stuff of Scientology that's entrusted to the Sea Org you wouldn't go down to Phoenix and get the goods on if any of you watch South Park or know anything about the the whole Xenu story that's the upper level confidential stuff where you know it gets back into old 76 trillion years ago planet Earth was a bunch of atomic bombs were dropped here and a bunch of people were dropped here and this is why we're all stuck in bodies here now is because this is all super highly confidential information in Scientology but you can watch it on South Park and and they and you can find all the stuff on the internet like I said it's a very detailed thing so I can't even pretend to give you all of it in one go but there are confidential upper-level scriptures and Scientology just like there are say in the Mormon Church right you only so many people can go in the temple and when you go in there you're sworn to secrecy it's kind of the same thing in Scientology only in Scientology you pay a lot of money to get there a lot and just just answer that question right now to get to the highest levels of Scientology you can expect to pay somewhere between five hundred thousand 750,000 a million dollars over the course of your of your time in Scientology you can expect to mortgage your house once or twice or three times get credit cards maxed them out over and over again and basically be raped and pillaged for anything and everything you've got money-wise because it's all about money is what it's really all about but I'm telling you about the beliefs and the various things here so so I joined this the organization and I did that for 17 years and I was very hardcore I was the believer of believers and I really really studied a lot of l ron Hubbard's materials I very passionately believed in it and I really did think that what we were doing was important and and I'm not gonna say that it was all a waste of time because it really wasn't over 25 years I salvaged marriages I did get people off drugs I did do good work you don't do something like that for 25 years if you're not getting something out of it but it's a nuanced conversation because while there was benefit and while there was good work done the proportion of totalitarian authoritarian kind of control that Scientology exerts on you the amount of invasiveness into your life even at a public level not at much less when you're hardcore working for it all the time is too much way way way too much and it's not something that the benefits are not worth the cost right so I'll just want to say that right now so as a c-word member I got paid about 40 bucks a week rent there's it's it's a salary position and and that was that was what I was getting your room and board is taken care of you were uniformed you were given a place to live I got married we had a room not a house not an apartment a room in fact it was in this building that's on the cover of my book that's this this building is that is the birthing building for the Sea Org members in Los Angeles and that's where I lived and I worked right across the street I got up in the morning we would have three musters every day where we would all get together roll call and count for everybody make sure nobody took off in the middle of the night which sometimes happened and there's a security force there keeping an eye on us just as much as they're keeping an eye on the criminals in Los Angeles and and it's a very policed activity right and in the Los Angeles base there are barbed wire fences but there are at the international base over in San Jacinto and in Hemet California and some of the more gruesome stories you might have heard about Scientology or we'll hear about him come from that location in Hemet that's where David Miscavige lives and that is where the central authority of Scientology is located and that's where a lot of very very abusive behavior happened but while I was in the see organization I was assaulted physically I had spent three years on a rehabilitation program called the RPF the rehabilitation project force which is where you go if you're a see org member and you've screwed up in such a way that they are really pissed at you and I did three years of that got through that program and that was that was a rough go I'm actually gonna read a whole nother book about that because it's it's kind of a whole experience in itself and and I continued on with the church until 2012 when I finally realized one day the thing that hit me I died had years of troubles and things that I saw organizationally that didn't really make a lot of sense to me Biewer bureaucracy and politics and stuff like that which happens in any group and I thought you know this isn't really going the way I thought it was going to go but the thing that actually hit me one day and this is important is I was doing in the last year's that I was working for for the SI organ for the church I was recovering people back into the church who had sort of drifted off right public people like I'd go to Phoenix or I go to Twin Cities Minnesota or I'd go to Orange County California and I would go knocking door-to-door you know hey you used to be doing Scientology and now you're not and you have money still that you paid to us for services and you never did them and we want you to come back in and get involved and be part of this saving the world come on and and I realized one day that in order to succeed at that job and get people back in or or in order to recruit people to be staff members like I was I had to lie to them more than tell them the truth I had to give them the impression that you could make money as a staff member that you could get time off that you could do that you could be given the time to do Scientology services because the 17 years that I was in the see organization I did not move one inch across that bridge of services it spent 17 years and all I did was classes and training from my job but I never did any actual Scientology and it had been believed yes I was a martyr and I knew it right but after 17 years it was getting a little tiring so I thought you know Here I am pitching all of the advantages and and emphasizing all the good things yet that's not really my life and that's not really the life of people I see around me all the staff members and in Twin Cities Minnesota were slaving away they weren't moving up the bridge they weren't getting courses they weren't their lives weren't any better as a result of Scientology and that there they were doing the same thing I'd been doing in Santa Barbara for all those years I went wow it just hit me out one day I was like oh like wow I'm actually lying to people I'm given I'm telling them things that aren't really true that's not why I signed up that's not why I'm doing this that's never was part of my idea of what of what I should be doing with my life and I thought I got to stop this I got to leave the C organization but I still believed in Scientology I still believed l ron Hubbard had hit on something really important and so I wanted to down take part of it and so and of course as a see org member because you're so dedicated because you're 24/7 because you're working and slaving so much you don't get to have kids there's no zero members or forbidden to have kids you have kids you kick you out and I thought well I want a family I want to I want to I want to I want to do this you know I'm I was forty-two or something at that point and I was like yeah I got it it's it's time I you know I was kind of maybe I was hitting a midlife crisis or something right but I thought okay it's time for me to to trim and make a change and I and I left the see organization it took me nine months to go through all the procedures and follow all the things they want you to do in order to leave and still be in good standing with the church you can just get up and go anytime you want but but they're not gonna be very happy with you and they're not gonna let you continue doing Scientology if you if you do that and I wanted to continue so I followed other rules did all their procedures and I left in December 2012 and I moved to Minnesota and then I got on the internet and when you're like all destructive cults or hi control groups Scientology does not want you learning about it through anything other than the works of l ron Hubbard so or what the church's propaganda is right so they don't want you listening to ex-members they don't want you getting the inside story they don't want you knowing what really goes on behind the closed doors so I was for kind of forbidden as we're all Scientologists from going on the internet and watching South Park I'd never watch South Park I'd never seen any of this stuff I didn't know anything really about Scientology other than what I had been being fed by Scientology over all those years so going down the rabbit hole of the internet right was quite the shocking experience because I found out that Scientology was not at all what I thought it was right in terms of l ron Hubbard had not graduated college had not been one of the first successful graduates of the first atomic physics classes in George Washington University back in the day as he claimed he had not been wounded in battle he had not taken on Japanese subs off the coast of Oregon he had not you know been in Australia been the first ranking officer in World War two and Australia to take on the Japs I mean that none of that happened and yet we were given this biography of l ron hubbard which was you know that this man was had had spent his entire life dedicated to saving mankind and doing all these good works and you find out yeah not so much right found out he was married to two women at the same time for a period of a year they didn't know about it right these are the wives didn't know what each other that was a little shocking he had he had three wives over all over his entire lifetime and and it was funny in one interview he was like yeah there wasn't a second wife you know something like that is kind of silly but he he was not the man he presented himself to be and he was not certainly not the man the church presented him to be he was a man who was a writer he wrote lots and pulp fiction including science fiction but also westerns romance ever detective everything and anything he could write he was this he was the whiz kid he was the speed demon at at typing out and banging out stories they weren't any good but he did a lot of it and he wrote through the depression and that was how he survived and made money and he did have an imagination and he was actually so imaginative in life that he made up all kinds of stories about himself to anybody in anybody who would listen and people kind of picked up on it when you read his biography from a man named Russell Miller who wrote this in the in the 1980s he was a British journalist it's a book called bear face Messiah and you get the the real deal on Hubbard's life you find out he was a bit of a pathological liar that was how he conducted himself through his life and he was teller of tall tales and some people believed it and some people saw right through it but that's how he conducted himself and in the 1940s after World War Two he was trying to convince the VA to give him a bigger pension than he deserved and then he had war wounds and all this sort of thing his claim was that he had been blinded and wounded in battle and that he had used the research that he'd been doing independently of psychology and cells and neuro neurology and this sort of thing that he developed what became the techniques of Dianetics to cure himself of his blindness and his war wounds and his injuries well when you find out that he was never really blind or injured in battle and that the worst thing he suffered from was conductive itis in an ulcer you go oh this really isn't based on what I thought it was based on right so that was what was going that's what I learned going down the rabbit hole I say of the internet in 2013 and my world was rocked and I was it's kind of you know there's some states of mind or emotional conditions you can get into that are a little hard to describe and single words I mean anger doesn't really go anywhere near how I felt to have learned that I'd been basically taken advantage of for 25 years by an organization that was more concerned with making money than it was with really saving the world and under the leadership to David Miscavige which I could talk about for a long time the church morphed it you know Hubbard say you know you can say a lot of things about over on Hubbard and I and I will but but he was a true believer I actually do think that after having studied and looked at everything that I know about the guy he really did believe in what he was saying even though he was also a pathological liar and a con man it's a it's a it's a complex situation right it's not it's not really black and white with him and there's lots of reasons I could I could tell you for why I think that I mean he really did practice Scientology on himself and he did that for years and that's one of the reasons I believe that he actually believed it the current leader who took over after Hubbard died in 86 David Miscavige is not a true believer but he's running it as though he is and so he talks the talk looks like he walks the walk but he doesn't and he's just really morphed to the church from a let's save the world sort of operation which is what really appealed to a lot of idealism in the 60s and 70s and got a lot of people involved too now being really pretty much just a pure money-making operation and that was one of the other things that I watched happen in front of my eyes over the years and I thought something's wrong here all this emphasis on money money money money money money and the de-emphasizing of getting people through services and in in saving people's lives I watched that happen over the course of time that I was involved in the church and so I thought yeah something's not right here and that's one of the reasons why I know David Miscavige is not a true believer because if you were a true believer in Scientology you would act and do and and things would be different they would be conducted differently so 2013 I am livid at what has been done and whatever what is what my life has been and I start posting on the internet anonymously right there are people who come out of Scientology there are people who come out of all destructive cults you will find forums and message boards and websites for ex-jehovah's witnesses for X Mormons for X Christians and Catholics and Gotthard followers and all kinds of people annual find X Scientology groups you'll find Facebook groups you'll find a website called the X Scientology message board and that was something I hit on pretty quickly was the X Scientology message board it's run by a Australian X Scientologists who put this thing up and lots of people go on there under anonymous names and post their experiences their thoughts their feelings about Scientology and I discovered that and found kin kindred spirits so to speak right I found people I could talk to about my experiences but I had to be careful because I had a girlfriend who I wanted to marry I had a fiance actually Astra to marry me who was a Scientologist and she was working at the church Scientology in Twin Cities her whole family were Scientologists right and now here I was there with her no longer in the Sea Org but still professing to be a Scientologist and yet I was finding out it was all basically right so I was like well hell what do I do now because I love this woman and I like her family and I want it I've moved to Minnesota to be with her what do I do and and at the same time I was really pissed and I am a communicator I'm the person who doesn't like to bottle up so I started posting anonymously you know Scientology I'll ron Hubbard now I was venting and I needed it I mean this was this was a recovery therapy for me the beginning of that so I I start posting on the sec's Scientology message board under the name I hate duplicity it was what is the name that I used right and I'm venting inventing inventing and I'm trying to kind of talk to her but I know I can't just dump all the truth on her because she's just gonna freak out and her family's gonna freak out and and here's the thing in the Church of Scientology if you become an apostate and you start speaking out publicly against the church in any form they're gonna have a real problem with you right a real problem and they practice a form of shunning they call it disconnection and they will there are labels that they put on people when they are in trouble with the church and then the big label the one that gets you in all the trouble is when they call you a suppressive person which is what I now am right and a suppressive person is defined by all ron Hubbard is an antisocial personality it's a person who is you know you're Napoleon's you're Hitler's you're you're Christie's you're you're criminals your guy you know that the people who are trying to do the world in that's how he defined suppressive people so you get agreement from Scientologists that even former family and friends if the church says they're a suppressive person they will disconnect from them they will kick them out of their life and they will no longer communicate in any way shape or form with that person if the church says they can't that's the power the church holds over its members and if you don't agree with the church on that you'll be declared a suppressive person and you'll get kicked out and it's an it is emotional and psychological blackmail no question about it and once you've sort of given over to the idea that Scientology is the most important thing in the world it's very easy to agree with this and they and they they used to do this more often they don't do it so much anymore but they would actually write a formal issue on on yellow goldenrod colored paper they call him a goldenrod and they say suppressive person declare Joe Smith right or Chris Shelton and they then describe all the horrible things you've done to earn being a suppressive person and they post this on notice boards at the various churches and so everybody can read it they go my god Joe went off the rails he's a bad guy now he's speaking out against Scientology he cheated on his wife he cheated on his taxes whatever they say you did and it's always exaggerated it's always half-truths it's always nonsense but they paint you in the worst possible light to convince all the Scientologists he can't be trusted she can't be talked to anymore and it doesn't matter if he or she is your dad or your son or your business partner or your best friend you are to cut ties no questions asked and they will work you over to do so right they have people in the church who work on staff and in the see organization who are called ethics officers and their job is to enforce the ethics of the group right and it's very formalized this is not wishy-washy sort of wandering sort of things they have written l ron Hubbard wrote ethics codes of errors and misdemeanors and crimes and high crimes that you can commit in Scientology and all of the high crimes are speaking out about Scientology right or somehow betraying the church you know murder and arson and those kind of things those those take a second seat to you know what I'm doing right now so so the ethics officers will work you over and if you're a business partner with Joe and Joe gets declared a suppressive person because he has gone down the rabbit hole of the internet or has somehow realized that Scientology's not what it should you know what he thinks it is and he doesn't want to do it anymore and he's telling you know if his business partner Joe or bill Scientologist is like still hardcore believer bill will be worked over by the church to kick Joe out just no longer be his business partner right by him out by out of shares whatever you got to do Joe can't be in your life anymore you cannot be connected to him anymore in any way no more Christmas presents no more Christmas cards no more birthdays no anyway if your kids know each other guess what they don't know each other anymore it's over right that happened to me when Scientology found out that I was posting on the internet even anonymously they monitor those boards they are the craziest organization they cannot deal with criticism and so they figured out from the things that I said who I was and they called me up and they sent some people out from Los Angeles to sit me down and deal with me and because I had you know people's ear I mean that I people in the area in Minnesota where I was knew me and they thought well of me and so they had to deal with me and they convinced me to to stop and I said okay I will stop because I loved this woman who was my fiancee at the time and I really wanted to not have that disconnection happen I didn't want that to occur so I tried to play ball but they while I was playing ball and doing there's a series of steps you would do in order to get back in the church was good graces when you've been a bad boy and I was going to do those steps and I started doing them but they disconnected me anyway and I said okay not okay and so it was that a year later December of 2013 I wrote them an email and I said okay I'm done I'm not doing your stupid steps I'm not doing this anymore you guys have taken away the only thing that really mattered to me anymore and I'm done you know I would have played ball I would have gone I would have and I'd still be doing it today if they hadn't done that but here's the thing Scientology is a draconian organization they can't help themselves it's in their DNA to act that way and that's because l ron Hubbard was a pretty vindictive guy he had a temper and he had a vicious streak to him that didn't deal well with criticism and so he wrote policies in the organization into the DNA of the organization that reflect that vindictiveness and that is what that's why the church acts the way that they do right and then by the church I don't mean like every single Scientologist you know would would agree that that what happened to me is okay but the people who administer justice in the church are these Sea Org members and they're hardcore and when l ron Hubbard wrote writes a policy that says if somebody breaks away from the church and somebody's criticizing the church you are to investigate and ruin them utterly which is exactly what he wrote right it didn't say get them to shut up he doesn't say make nice with them he doesn't say handle their problems he says you ruin them utterly well that's that's pretty clear right and so you might hear stories about the church hiring private investigators and stalking and harassing ex members who speak out that happened in Texas recently with a guy named Marty Rathbun who was way way high up in the church they followed him around I mean they carried out a campaign of harassment at his house for like sex six to eight months before they finally got him to snap and lash out at one of them and then then look at what he did to us right they're literally parked outside his house following his wife to the grocery store every day his wife was never even involved in Scientology right this is the kind of harassment that they that they do I go on you know we're Remini it's a show out I am speaking out about Scientology for quite a while I go on her show she we have a short conversation on the show is great she's great she's she's really pretty cool pretty cool lady and the next day up goes a website about me a page about how what a horrible awful person I am and how I'm a deadbeat dad and cheated on my wife and all this kind of stuff and again embellishments half-truths exaggerations right none of what's in there is the literal truth but it kind of follows the truth right kind of but presented in the worst possible light and that's now up on the internet about me anybody can find that right and I have to deal with that as a Scientology critic but it's important enough to me to talk to people about this and let you all know what this organization is really about that I deal with that okay fine you know they're gonna lie about it all that really happened as a result of that page going up by the way was I three axed the number of Twitter followers that I have and my subscribers on YouTube went up above 10,000 so I was I was okay with that actually it was okay because people now know over the years of exposure of Scientology what they do how they do it and so when you're speaking out against it in a public forum you tend to be looked at more correctly as you know rat it's a rather heroic effort and I don't and I'm not at all saying that I'm some kind of hero because I'm not but it is and it does take an extraordinary effort to take on an organization that if they really wanted to you know and put the time and money into it could could make my life very very difficult you know so so that's a chance to take when you do something like what I'm doing but that's basically my my experience with it which I think kind of encapsulates a little bit of what the group's about and what they do what they tell there are people when you first get involved and why people would get involved in that the to get a little bit more into the beliefs and whatnot Scientology is all about personal empower and the carrot is a big strong care I mean people really want that it's not hard to get people revved up about the idea of eternal salvation I mean all religions basically have that but the thing with Scientology is it says look it's not a matter of faith it's not a matter of belief we have the exact scientific figured out way for you to get from where you're at now to a godlike state and we're not messing around we actually have it figured out and we promise that we will get you there if you do what we say and you pay us the money to get there right that is what they're promising and people fall for that I did I'm not I think you might get I'm not a stupid person it doesn't have anything to do with how smart you are there are doctors lawyers you know candlestick makers everybody who's in Scientology it has nothing to do with what you know or don't know or your intellect it has to do with appeal to emotion and appeal to Authority those are the two main logical fallacies people fall into when they go for these groups and this is I've come to learn over the last four years after getting out of this I I wanted to say at the beginning I'll say this now obviously I am NOT objective about this subject okay I get it right I have biases right I am the first to admit that I am not telling you that I'm neutral about this subject however I will also say that as an apostate and as somebody who lived it walked the walk talked the talk really believed I feel that apostates are in a better position to be able to tell people like you what these groups are about because we were true believers because we really do know what the mindset looks and feels and sounds like and then when you come away from that mindset and you are you're motivated as a former member and victim of a group like this to learn all about it and then try to educate others about the dangers of groups like this and how the mechanisms that the group uses are actually very pervasive and all around us they're used in politics they're used in sports they're used in you know employment in the industries right so in advertising and the media oh my god right once you start seeing how these techniques work you've you know you kind of like wow this is kind of very pervasive the thing about the Church of Scientology in l ron Hubbard is he almost made it a science it's been said among people who study destructive cults that Scientology is sort of the cult of cults because it has more coercive techniques there's a lot of ways to put this right I mean brainwashing is is it's a wishy-washy term and it's not really a good term to use but you start talking things like undue influence or coercive persuasion high control groups right which Scientology definitely is it's all about controlling every aspect of your life once you really get into it the mechanisms there are more of those of those control mechanisms installed in the techniques of Scientology then you'll find in the Moonies Jehovah's Witnesses the Mormons you'll find some of those things I've done interviews on my channel with ex-jehovah's witnesses or ex Mormons or a woman who was involved in a in Bill Gothard Christian ATI cult and you find some of those mechanisms some of those control techniques used but in Scientology there's like about a thousand of them all Thals dispersed throughout the various techniques that are used especially the counseling techniques that they use so that's why I say sure I had benefits other people had benefits I did some good things while I was involved because I was motivated to do good things but I would never ever ever recommend that anybody go get involved in that group thinking that they're gonna get the benefits and somehow they'll be good enough to not get the the bad stuff because the bad stuff starts hitting you from day one and it and it just it's it's pervasive it's in the DNA of the group it's not a thing where you can go in and sort of skim the surface Scientology doesn't work that way they're not gonna let you work it that way right once you get in it's in for a penny in for a pound and they're just relentless and just try to get off their mailing lists hey man and I know how much work gets done on that cuz I used to do it right they say skip Tracy who they follow you they you know there are people who did okay there was a guy this is this is how bad it is I was out doing the door-to-door you know recovery work right I was out in Minnesota and I go knocking on a guy's door I had my list of all the people in Minnesota they were like 900 people total nonsense I mean it really came down to about 50 but I had this big list of 900 people and there was a guy on the list who was who Scientology thought was clear it gone all the way up to the state of clear which is a pretty high level in Scientology and he had been trained as a counselor so why what wow this is a guy I want to get back I go knock on his door at seven o'clock at night one night he goes ballistic on me he's like dude when are you people gonna leave me alone and I go I'm sorry but you know you you got to clear I mean come on you know let's talk and he goes clear man I bought a book at a swap meet 20 years ago what are you talking about clear I never went clear I bought a book at a swap meet right and over the years this had become altered to you know this guy being a major player in the world of Scientology and I was like oh my god I am so sorry off I went but this is you know so so Eve the thing there's so many things to say about this but you know even the Scientologists think there's so much bigger and so much more influencing and so much more pervasive in society than they really are because they're constantly fed false information at their gatherings and events about how big they are they think there are millions of Scientologists there aren't I've seen the lists at most at their peak period in the late 1970's and early 80's Scientology had maybe 750,000 people involved total over all the years since 1950 worldwide about 750,000 and ice and I base that figure off of when you go into a church Scientology and buy a book or bias by a service of any kind even at a swap meet they'll take your name and number and they will make a folder for you and they will put a copy of the invoice and then they'll start writing new letters and through the letter writing they keep up on your address and this kind of thing right and they've been they just work these lists and there's a that's called central files and all the churches across the u.s. and internationally send those names up to a central database excuse me and in Los Angeles at one of the higher level churches there they have a very large central files with folders for all these people right in Los Angeles Church and then and one of the Sea Org churches there and the number of folders that are there is about 750,000 so I go okay that's about how many folks they've had and I also happen to hold the list in my hand one day of the International Association of Scientologists international membership and that is their membership group if you're a Scientologist you are expected to be a member of the IAS and you pay for that privilege and that list was nowhere near a million it wasn't even a hundred thousand so you know they'll go on Chris Kirstie Alley will go on to Howard Stern and say there's tens of millions of Scientologists and she thinks that's true because she's told that she's a celebrity she doesn't know they go yeah there's tens of millions members well sure we got all those files right not even close I went to twin cities on a real whole recovery thing thinking that there were nine hundred Scientologists in the five state area around the Saint Paul Church I called all 900 of those names personally we sat in a room we intensively work that thing I went door to door about a hundred and twenty Scientologists right that was it over all those years that was all we could find so millions of members you know know they can't even fill up the Shrine Auditorium and that seats 3,200 so you know come on oh yes it is yeah I think I'm gonna I think I'm gonna go into questions now because I there's there's so many factors and aspects of this I could talk about but I wanted to kind of give an overview of my own experience with it and then get into any questions you have about the organization the structure of it the belief system anything my book by the way is called Scientology a-to-z new that's just a joke it's just Kazee new is with a Z right z new is for anybody who doesn't know is a very important word in Scientology at the confidential levels the lower-level Scientologists and basically 95% of Scientologists have no idea what that story is they if you showed them South Park they'd be like I have no idea what you're talking about this is this is nonsense this isn't Scientology because you have to pay to get to a level called ot3 the confidential upper levels are called the OT levels remember I said a spiritual mean is called a Satan in Scientology when you get to be a powerful phaeton you are called an operating thetan your operational right you know how to how to make things happen and and an OT is to actually technically defined in Scientology as a being who is at cause over matter energy space time life and form so that's your godlike state you were at cause you are able to influence and make anything happen with matter energy space time life or form those are that's a fairly powerful state to promise somebody right and you're supposed to get there by doing these levels kind of similar to you know a ladder you climb ot one ot to ot three ot four and at the level of ot three is the South Park store is the Z news story and it's and it's you know if you if you buy into the idea that you are a spiritual being who lives life after life after life you hit you have a body you live it it dies you go get another body and then you live another life and then you live another one and if you accept that then you accept that we have been living in bodies on this cycle for much longer than planet Earth has been around and l ron Hubbard asserted that this universe is much older than science as it is he said this universe has been around for trillions and trillions of years and we've been playing this game of life for a very long time so that's how he gets away with a story where 76 trillion years ago we were all spiritually living in other places in the universe and this guy named Xenu decided to gather us all up and bring us to Planet Earth against our will by knocking us out and making and then blowing up planet Earth with a bunch of atomic weapons and then horrible things happen to us as spiritual entities and we've been stuck here ever since and that's basically the story there's a lot more details to it but that's that's kind of in a nutshell right and there are only through the special procedures of Scientology are you able to recover this information for yourself get personal subjective reality on it and we retain you know reiative or rehabilitate your actual spiritual power and ability so that you can be it caused over matter energy space time and life and form it sounds really really wonderful as a thing and I really wish it were true but I know a lot of people who did those ot levels right and they had they cheated on their wives they committed suicide they got cancer they died just like everybody else so my statement at this point to the church is show me a clearer show me an OT show me one of these people who has these abilities that I'll run Hubbard promise because I never saw one the whole time I was in and it's a it's it I will be the first to admit it took me way too to realize hey maybe this isn't everything it's cracked up to be but it cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias are powerful mental forces and I'm just gonna say that when you're raised in something like this as a second-generation person that itself is a whole nother cognitive force that acts on you right if it was good enough for my dad it's good enough for me right so those were things that influenced my decision-making process and it's the reason why after I got out I don't self-identify on social media or on YouTube as the ex-scientologists at large but the critical thinker at large right thank you because I discovered critical thinking and I was like oh my god this is a subject Carl Sagan James Randi Penn & Teller I was like wow it was like a whole new world and here were people who were not telling me how to think or what to think they were saying look dude just think and I was like okay I think I will you know and I started reevaluating all of the beliefs and systems and thoughts and things that l ron Hubbard had installed and it's been a recovery process ever since and so I am big on critical thinking and now not only talked about Scientology on my channel but I've also put out a lot of content about how I've learned about critical thinking and try to teach other people about it not from the viewpoint of I am the guy who knows everything about it but more I'm the guy who's learning and I want to share what I'm learning as I go and so that's kind of what my channel has been so let's give Chris a big hand for those of you who may want to be joining Scientology come on up and oh yeah I talked to you breathe yeah about this David okay for those who didn't see it on Meetup there's a guy named David pally who's been trolling Chris and in this meeting and is he sponsored by the church or just a volunteer does he think he's actually gonna get people from a group like this to go along with Scientology I think he might think that I don't know the man so I can't say for sure whether these church sponsored or not but the way he went from the comments that I saw which are the sum total of my experience with a guy he sounds like an independent Scientologists and let me just tell you guys real fast there are people who leave the church as members but still believe in l ron Hubbard in his teachings even if they think that the abuses of the organization they put that at David Miscavige's door and they still think l ron Hubbard's a great guy and I think that this man who's been commenting on the meetup channel was was that I think that's who he is okay thank you yeah one quick question that one thing I didn't get from your talk is if you're a member of the church but you're not a counselor or on staff you just remember the church what is practicing Scientology on a daily basis look like going to classes and or doing counseling receiving counseling services and and also being talked to for hours on end to donate money to the International Association of Scientologists because they have a status system within the International Association of Scientologists of patrons patron meritorious patron glorious patron with honors patron gold with honors and the more you give the more status you get and status is a big deal in the world of Scientology I went to college for three weeks and then I joined staff oh so you didn't go to college really in them I heard that they teach the they treat the celebrities differently because that's kind of what all they've got right now yes how does that work the l ron Hubbard in 1955 started pushing the idea of getting celebrities involved in Scientology and he had some Hollywood connections with Gloria Swanson and couples celeb with couple celebrities of that sort of status in 1969 in 1970 they started an organization formerly called The Celebrity Center as a part of Scientology in Los Angeles with a specific purpose of getting celebrities involved in Scientology because Hubbard said that the PR value of celebrities for Scientology is really really high and that actually worked out for them with John Travolta coming on in the 70s Kelly Preston and his wife in the 80s and of course Tom Cruise they discovered the double-edged trouble with celebrities when Tom Cruise started jumping around on Oprah's couch in the 2000s and people started correctly looking at Tom Cruise is a little bit nutty which he is I've actually met John Travolta he's a super nice guy his wife is really nice but she's kind of hardcore and Tom Cruise is just kind of nuts and so so the celebrity thing is now working against them but for many many years it seemed to be working for them oh yeah lots of money Tom Cruise is given millions to the church how much is your book oh yeah let me tell you about this real fast so my book is not a memoir this is a critical analysis of Scientology and so that's why it's called Scientology a-to-z no it's 20 bucks I I wrote it as a series of essays basically covering the history of Scientology who l ron hubbard is like from the get-go the purification rundown i talked about that detox program is covered in here their tax exemption because they got tax exemption as a church in the 1950s had it taken away from them and 90 67 because Hubbard was found to be personal enjoyment and they got it back in 1993 I think it was I tell the whole story of that how that happened why it happened and and what needs to happen to kind of get rid of it there's three chapters in here about recovering from Scientology that you know from my own experience with that which i think is useful for anybody from any group and a lot of other stuff in here about how Scientology works including a breakdown in a way I don't think anybody else has actually done of not just what's covered in South Park but all those OT levels that I talked about they're all detailed in here and why Scientologists actually believe that they're saving the world through what they do so that and my story of course is chapter one just to sort of establish my credentials so so that's what this book is okay you were saying that you had dated this lady and you were in love with her she was Scientologist as well as her family what happened to that she well she disconnected from me and her family did and she they were actually I tried to engage with her three times and she just turned her back and walked away from me which kind of sucked after she said she wouldn't marry me that was really harsh actually it took me about two years to get over that I she's now I just found out how to randomly I don't it's not like I'm stalking her or something but a friend of a friend saw on Facebook that she had gotten married so she's obviously connected up with some other Scientologist and I have moved on and I have a girlfriend that I literally just moved in with a week ago and I'm very very happy about that so yeah so I Foos on yeah I have several questions um you mentioned when you were growing up that you had friends at school who were not connected to Scientology there is a lot of charter schools now or kind of like parochial schools where the school members the students are from families that believe in things do you know if there are any Scientology charter schools there are school up in Portland Oregon called the Delphi school they also have one in Los Angeles and one in Clearwater Florida that are private schools you pay a lot of money they're mostly staffed by Scientologists and they teach l ron Hubbard principles as well as the you know reading writing arithmetic it cost thousands and so that's why a lot of parents will actually go work at the schools to get free tuition for their kids and and they have secularized some of l ron Hubbard's materials to teach it to kids and then also what you're describing sounds a lot I've known people who were in esthe it sounds a lot like s where the people doing the work aren't really getting anything but they're they're pushing all this money upward to do scientology calls s and the forum and on any of those groups they call them squirrel groups meaning they've taken scientology and altered it and delivering it in some other form and they are down on those groups and scientology has actually gone after asked behind the scenes a little bit and then also i heard that at one point scientology was taking people to court who criticized them and they were like trying to destroy them financially by by filing lawsuits against them are they still doing that i'll tell you the number one reason for that is because in Discovery David Miscavige might be deposed and he ain't interested in that because he does not want to be put under oath in a courtroom so they tend they tend to not have the teeth legally that they used to have in the 1980s and 1990s Scientology was extremely litigious and l ron Hubbard wrote in the policies of the church to use the justice system against critics because he said it's at a useful Ally in taking people down the court system can be used for that so it's a matter of church dogma but after David Miscavige started doing things that he didn't really want to talk about in a quarter court of law the church has not been so litigious there have been a couple suits but they were brought against Scientology not Scientology bringing them against people they'll just hire pies and stalk and harassing now yes Oh in going clear the remedy how you pronounce her last name we're remedy right document it was hard to get out hard to escape oh she mentioned was very difficult to get out to escape and it was a big ordeal but you didn't mention it that way well I said to get out of the organization right I mean she literally with her body trying to get out it was the security and everything was monitored she literally couldn't get away so and she had death threats to know well that could be which may or may not be from the church I can't say right but Leah Remini paid hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to cooperate with the church to get Corrections made internally in the church because she was asking questions that you shouldn't really be asking and leah is a ballsy woman and she saw things that she didn't agree with and she said this isn't right I want to know why this is happening it's not cool with me for example where's David Miscavige's wife she wasn't she didn't attend Tom Cruise's wedding in Italy Leah did David Miscavige did other Scientologist did but we but Shelly David's wife wasn't there and she's like where's Shelly leah was Shelly's friend well Shelly's been disappeared she she's up stuck in a mountain organization up in the mountains of California and so she's been kind of hidden away so we I wasn't supposed to ask about that and because she did because she was making noise about it she was put into a kind of counseling session and Scientology called a security check we're basically you're asked for the things you've been doing wrong because Scientologists say that the only reason you're of the church or the organization or David Miscavige's because you've been doing things that are bad it's a very introverted process and this is all from l ron Hubbard right so she had to excuse me she had to pay for the privilege of being asked her what her crimes were about $200,000 before she finally went this is nonsense I am NOT putting up with this anymore she tried just like I did she tried to cooperate tried to do the steps tried to follow along until she finally said ok that's it I'm done and she took months to arrange her family her mother her husband and family members and they all left at the same time and that's how she kept her family intact right I was lucky because my family my parents got out of Scientology before I did and they but they didn't do it publicly in a big way like I did they just kind of drifted off and that caused me a little bit of trouble internally in the church there were efforts made to get me to disconnect to my mom but I resisted those and and six it and successfully because my mom wasn't making noise wasn't out there being an apostate she was just yeah I'm not so interested anymore maybe some day you know they call her she's like yeah maybe but really she was like yeah no way am I going back and when I left in 2012 I landed with her and I had that support system to start with and that was a huge huge help for me so that's that's what I know that we a story hi Chris I wanted to ask you why did you not include in the preface an explanation of xeno I searched high and low for an explanation of that word yeah it's I maybe I should have put it in there it didn't even occur to me that that actually that people with southpark and everything I kind of thought whether he's gonna know what this is that's probably my bad I should probably put it in the preface but there is a it is covered in detail in the chapter on the OT levels so that is an it is covered in there okay that's the last question he will be back there to sign books he has a 1:30 flight so we don't have a whole lot of time for him to okay thank you guys this was fun I really appreciate it thank you you
