THIS Is The Most Dangerous Thing About Scientology

foreign [Music] on on the edge with Andrew gold John ATAC family and friends is his channel it's a fantastic Channel John is one of the smartest people on YouTube cerebral esoteric we've had some great conversations before on this podcast and YouTube channel um and he's a friend of mine and John is going to talk about brainwashing and things like that and why it's most dangerous scientology's most dangerous sort of brainwashing thing uh out there but first I want to ask you John a little bit about what got you into Scientology because John is a former Scientologist what what got you there in the first place well it it's a very long time ago it was 1974. I'd come back from being abandoned in Toulouse for six weeks where I'm playing drums in a band and I had had a week of not eating and then I got home and my girlfriend had disappeared and I found out that she was moving to New Zealand with one of my mates and we've been living together 15 months so this was a bit bit odd and um so I I cast around looking for a solution to that and sadly found a copy of a book called science of Survival by Ron Hubbard read the first half of that which is it's about the only sensible book that's marketed under Hubbard's name uh it wasn't written by him it was written by a man called Richard DeMille who was the son of Cecil B Demille the director so there you go there's a little Cinema fact for you and uh it seemed like since walk I went in these people were really sweet and Charming they were largely graduates of what was then Bournemouth Polytechnic in art subjects so got on with them like a house on fire and didn't do anything to help my distress about my girlfriend about a year later I realized it was a really good thing that that we weren't together anymore um so it never addressed that I was nine years involved um never a Living member never the kind of brainwashed zombie that does exactly what they're told which is the image that people seem to have of cult members sadly it's like it's fine to say that you're suffering from a mental illness these days and and so it should be you shouldn't be you know if you're depressed or something like you should be able to say that but if you say you've been in a cult oh oh no you know get out the crucifix in the garlic and and stop this person so anyway I had nine years of that I did 25 of the then 27 available levels of Scientology so I am technically a clear and an operating thetan level five so um watch out you know supernatural abilities that's high yeah yeah and uh it cost a lot less than it costs now it costs you about half a million quid to to get to that these days um my total spend in what was it back then my total spend in nine years was nine thousand pounds um which is still too much okay an accounting for inflation yeah that's uh it'd be a bit more than that now uh if you go and check it online um but nonetheless I I didn't I wasn't abused or humiliated I I've realized since having talked with more than a thousand scientologists that I seem to be unique in that regard but you know unless you're a Tom Cruise or you know John Travolta all sorts of horrible things happen to you the worst thing that happened to me was having 13 hours in a sales interview and uh this money lender called Lee Lawrence had come around with one of their sales people to sell me on buying on it six or seven thousand pounds worth of stuff and you've got a check already written in my name and um it was only going to be 30 a year interest and so I had 13 hours of that and at the end of 13 hours I still hadn't taken the check so um despite the brainwasher did you nearly take no never came close it was a ridiculous idea you just have to sit there you have to sit there for 13 hours well I didn't have to I I could have I could have said I've had enough of this and go but they seem to want to exhaust themselves and and so they did I I afterwards dealt with many people who'd borrowed money from Lee Lawrence at these extortionate rates and they'd say to me John what do we do about this and I said you don't pay him back they're not legal contracts so I mean hopefully you know 40 years later as he was about 70 then he's no longer with us so he won't sue me for for you know insulting him deeply which which is what would happen but hard selling is a major aspect to Scientology you know uh Hubbard is very insistent on it so I've basically I went through it in 1983 it was just getting nasty you know there's a lot of bullying and shouting going on and it was really bad enough that they were wearing sailor suits and all of this kind of thing and I just went Hubbard must be gone we've you know there are about half the membership left at that time that may maybe at most 50 000 people in Scientology then despite their claims to five seven eight or eleven million um and about half of us left a lot just kind of back into the woodwork gone don't want anything to do with it but some of us really believed and I was a True Believer and that's how I left and a few months after I left I had a dump of documents brought to me and read through them and realized that Alan Hubbard was a liar and as his essential principle is honesty is sanity and as he said uh the road to truth must be trod with true steps I kind of went he's a liar what really got me and this is to me the most important thing is that I then went to other people who believed and showed them the evidence that proved Beyond any shadow of a doubt the Hubbard was a liar that material is things he said that contradict other things he said so there's a document called My Philosophy which is displayed handwritten at Saint Hill in East grinstead down here in in Sussex down there in Sussex and in it he says that he was crippled and blinded with injured optic nerves and physical injuries to hip and back I'm not sure what other kind of injuries you can have other than physical injuries and I think it may tell us that he was making something up so at the end of the war he was crippled and blinded in Oak Knoll hospital then in another place in a uh professional Auditors bulletin called communication and business he says that on July 25th he went down to Hollywood 1945 he went down to Hollywood and beat up three Petty officers so you're going so you're crippled and blinded by August the 14th the end of the war but on July the 25th and without seeing any combat in between you beat up three Petty officers and even that's a lie there were two Petty officers involved in the fight and he didn't beat them up I did my work I then became the historian of Scientology I nobody else has done it I trolled you know no internet so I would write to the Montana Historical Society I got his Navy records as FBI records I cite 150 people that I either interviewed or you know read testimony or books by to construct my book let's sell these people a piece of Blue Sky which is a quotation from Ron Hubbard on the day that he opened his first Foundation in April 1950 in Elizabeth New Jersey he said to the guy next to him just about to open the doors let's sell these people a piece of blue sky and I think they've been selling it ever since so I became the historian of the movement I became the biographer of Ron Hubbard I worked with um the Sunday Times journalist Russell Miller on his what a fantastic title bare-faced Messiah you know which is Still Remains the bug FIFA but it's based on on my book and I've worked with him from the point where he was given the contract by the Sunday Times right through to the court cases where I was given expert witness status in the high court in London on Scientology which means what I say about scientology can be taken be true can I just say about blue sky so when he says that I think I know what the metaphor is it's like is it saying let's sell these people something they already have it's right there is that does that what is that what that means there are two specific references the first is the the guy he told it to Don Rogers who who told me um said that that he was talking about selling the memberships so that they wouldn't get anything and and Scientology now you have patrons patrons meritorious patrons this and it's actually an amount of money that you've given Nancy Cartwright the voice of Bart Simpson boasts that she's given 21 million dollars to Scientology uh Leia Remini who is now a troublemaker when it comes Scientology admits that on a single day she gave them a million dollars so and for that you get a little labeler I I met this guy and he'd given them 35 000 pounds towards building a new organization which would be called an ideal organization and in return in perpetuity he would have a car parking space there so every life when he was reborn this car parking space would be renewed sadly he left Scientology and by the time I met him he was working two jobs to pay off the money he borrowed oh man so so that's the so the Blue Sky just the metaphor there I'm just making sure I got the metaphor right is like because you've already got blue sky but we're making you pay for it well we'll sell you something that's blue sky it's just uh it doesn't it's it's already yours you know yeah exactly there is of course a secondary meaning which which is BS Blue Sky I see okay yeah I like that because then he's also quoted as saying uh I think am I right about this that um if you want to make if you want to get rich make a religion or something like that yeah to make a million start a religion Russell and I found four people he told that to in the 1940s and Scientology came back and said no he didn't say it George Orwell did it's like oh yeah you can't repeat something that's already been sad so that's true wow so so he just he knew it so that must have been quite upsetting for you when you came to realize that it was all Bs blue sky and then you were telling other people what did that teach you about other people when they wouldn't accept what you were telling them well you know I then it's a long time ago you know I left nearly 40 be 40 years ago in in October and so I've had a long time to study psychology and understand what happens when when people become embedded in a belief and this is cognitive dissonance that if somebody has a strong belief and you give them evidence that they're wrong it'll strengthen their belief so you have to go at it a little bit more carefully frequently when you know a member of a family joins a an authoritarian cult the family will try and argue they'll get newspaper articles they'll they'll buy my book whatever and they'll try and argue with the person to convince them it will almost always fail because of cognitive dissonance and so you have to get to it another way you have to create a relationship with the person where they're willing to accept your Authority and as a family member you probably can't do that it's very difficult um whereas if an outsider like me comes in and I haven't done this kind of work for a long time but I did if somebody comes in who obviously knows a great deal about the subject then it it becomes possible to um tease away at the edges but you do that by paralleling you don't go directly at the group you've got the manifestations the things that the group does so what I used to do I'd show people uh this video is on my channel it's a Canadian video called um captive Minds hypnosis and Beyond and it shows what incredible clothes people used to wear in 1982 with huge lapels and fuzzy hair and things like that but if you can get past that the material in it is pretty good it teaches you about you know the way the hypnosis or brainwashing if you like is used and I then move on to a video called my dance is now complete about rajneesh uh which shows some of the tricks and traps of that it was really weird that wild wild country when sit ran six hours and didn't tell you anything about what the Russian issues do it was just the the former executive committee of the roshni she's bickering with each other as to whether they still believed in rajnish or not but by sharing that video which is you know the orange people they look so different scientologists and at the end of watching that video Scientologist I was dealing with would say well that's nothing like us and I'd be able to say well you know they do talk about the poodle press so that attitude towards the media never being correct that's common and they say yeah then I'd show them the shrinking world of hour and Hubbard which again is on my channel and it's 20 minutes it's the only hostile interview that that Hubbard did with a wonderful man called Charlie Nan uh back in 1968 and in it he admits to having a first and a third wife he says I had no second wife and he's told you about two marriages so he's he's basically I had a first marriage I didn't have a second marriage and now I've got the third one he he's asked about bank accounts in Switzerland and he says no I do have one bank account in Switzerland you know which you know he died leaving uh 648 million dollars all of it taken from Scientology had no other Revenue Source um and he he also when he's asked about reincarnation he pauses when he's asked if he believes in reincarnation and Charlie says but your followers believe in he was oh yes they believe so I I had a you know a lot it had about 12 years where I was talking about scientology and um Scientology critical nilemma when asked him for a puff for that Sally's piece people a piece of Blue Sky said before the internet and safety and numbers there was John ATAC and I wasn't the only one there were about three other people in the world that's obvious did you get attacked for your for being outspoken about them right from the first day and every day thereafter the you know I'd be followed a private detective called Eugene Ingram toured the whole world to pick up information about me he went to Australia to find the girl who'd got away when I was 19. um he interviewed her mother he came to my parents house my father was terminally ill at the time and and accused them of growing cannabis which they weren't they were growing tomatoes he was not much of a botanist Gene Ingram and then they published a little pamphlet from all of that that kind of Scandal campaign is is a normal way it's called noisy investigation within Scientology and it's important to stay here and I've there are people who don't believe this but it is the truth that I knew nothing about the intelligence agency within Scientology and nor did any other Rank and file member it was only a few worked within it the same as you know we don't tend to know what MI5 and MI6 are doing um I didn't know what they were doing when I found out that Hubbard's wife Mary Sue Hubbard had signed a stipulation of evidence more than 200 Pages which I did read in some depth more than once admitting to kidnapping false imprisonment burglary breaking and entering bugging theft of government documents forgery of government credentials when I found out that Mary Sue Herbert and 10 others had been sent to prison for that in the U.S in a similar case was successful in in Canada I realized that I'd not been involved in a religion I've been involved in an intelligence agency and I suppose initially I felt some need to make up not that I'd done anything horrible when I was a Scientologist but I wanted to make up for having been part of a dangerous criminal organization and I think I've more than done that by now what kinds of what us just to give some people an idea some of the most dangerous things that Scientology does I'm thinking of like ripping families apart bankrupting people some people have died even though well those are among the things um Scientology has a much higher side rate than than his average I think largely because people believe that it will be helpful to them and invest everything into it and when it doesn't work you know um that they're at the end of their tether and they've got nowhere to go um it also seemed I mean in when I left there were a large amount of scientologists who died of cancer and there were scientologists who believed independent scientologists who believed that this was something to do with some of the techniques of Scientology I don't think so I think it's because people come to believe that Scientology will heal them despite it making claims that it's not Medical in any way people believe that so there's a guy called Brown McKee who was a 24-year member and in 1982 uh he gave testimony at the Clearwater hearings in Florida against Scientology and he said that when his wife developed cancer they went down to the Florida headquarters and they were they were given the card to go to somewhere you know like the Hoxie Clinic one of these Mexican clinics where they give you apricot kernels or something and it's meant to cure you and he said that when they arrived at this place the waiting room was full of high-level scientologists people like him and his wife who'd done all of Scientology Were Meant to have achieved this Supernatural state where no disease could could apply to them I think it was just that they didn't wait you know they waited too long before getting treatment uh so sad and people people speculated about Lisa Marie Presley I think because didn't she die of cancer and then not of not of cancer but John Travolta's son I believe was ill and there's a lot of speculation about whether they gave him the right drugs because of Scientology and and you'll have a straightforward case like Karen De La carrier who's whose son Alexander died from a completely treatable illness and he was not given the antibiotics he needed so um and they the treatment of the inner group and as I say I I never belonged to this this didn't happen to me I was so so lucky but it's called The Sea organization C sea as in a body of water because Hubbard created his own little Navy and reading the account say Mike rinder good friend of mine his billion years where he basically talks about being sold as a slave you know at 18 years old he arrived on Herbert ship to do a management training course so that he could become an executive in Australia and his passport was taken from him and he was told that he'd been traded that the Australian organization had traded him for some free courses and now he belonged to this organization he had no money there's no way he could get out and his story is one of thousands where people have been trafficked which hopefully will come home to roost soon somebody will do something about it it's outrageous and Mike rinder as well is somebody currently going through uh cancer at the moment so our thoughts are are with him he has esophageal cancer and we believe that that he's we think he's going to be okay we think he's caused early enough and and he's you know just fascinating character we we met once while while he was in Scientology and he was for 20 years running harassment and um which got you know pretty difficult at times I must say and we met once he and a bunch of them flew in from LA and wanted to meet me and settle everything with me and I sat in a room with him and he said that on that day although I seemed like a nice guy and and you know relatively smart and what have you that he would he would have destroyed me because I was an impediment to man's Only Hope of survival and to then come to get to know this man as a friend and realized that that he is he's actually an empath he's a really empathetic person who was then weaponized by Scientology and I think this is often the case that people are empathetic are they're sold some perverted idea of people who were if 45 of medical doctors in Germany joined the Nazi party so you know an education is not going to stop it and even in the caring professions you're not necessarily you're going to believe this nonsense that was told you can take take people who are they really want to do good in the world and you sell them on some crazy idea that does harm um and that's what happened to Mike rinder we have an extensive piece on Holocaust Denial on my channel um because it of all things that offend me nothing bothers me more than Holocaust denial the idea that the most witnessed event in history you know there are what 180 000 testimonies that people are still going oh no it didn't happen but then I I also have an issue I don't want to get too sidetracked by I also don't necessarily like that like in Germany it's a um you know you can go to prison I thought that's silly isn't it Adam you know my family's Jewish I'm yeah I think I think that's that's too much is I don't you know you should be able to say the most horrible things in the world I think that's just my opinion yeah yeah free freedom of speech and if yes and I think you know the the guy the professor who was sent to prison in France for Holocaust denial and gnome Chomsky of all people went and talked on his behalf and people are saying but he's a fascist and how can you do this and Chomsky is saying it's a stupid idea you know saying that that you can't express an opinion and I think we saw with David Irving that you can actually deconstruct the stupidity face to face in a courtroom and and show that the man was was absolutely wrong so yeah um yeah Timothy spaul because that's the amazing he's fantastic he's wonderful yeah so so this is something I've struggled with sometimes because I've interviewed as you know a lot of ex-scientologists and a lot of them who are a lot deeper than you were and who were in The Sea org and who must have been through I mean as you say through uh you know wishful thinking and magical thinking and wanting to do good and you know expressing empathy have been horrible and have really screamed at people and punched them and done horrible things and uh it's so funny to see I suppose I'm not really asking a question here I'm just sort of continuing the conversation but just to say it's so funny to see when I speak to these people whether it be Mike rinder in particular because I think he was a real attack dog at that time uh and to think well he's so nice and lovely to everyone but he did all these horrible things I don't know how to sort of square that with myself you know it's difficult and I mean a lot of people have criticized Mike um and said you know you shouldn't be he should apologize more and as Mike says you know how many times you know he is not only you know in my point of view is that because he stood up against him and he's been willing to speak out about them that he's paid his Jews that and and we we have to allow for that we have to allow for Redemption if we don't as a society then well we better just start killing people fundamentally as many as we can um because if people can't be redeemed if they can't get better if they can't change then what's the point it also makes uh an apology useless doesn't it I I know Ricky Gervais was talking about I can't remember what actor it was it might have been Kevin Hart or someone somebody had said something homophobic and and bad as a tweet it was a joke but it was it was bad taste and uh he apologized I think at the time and then the Oscars were going to make him the host this was 10 years later and they realized these old tweets had cropped up and they said we need you to make a public apology and he said well I have done and what use is an apology if you've then got to do it every 10 years I meant it when I apologize that should be enough but sometimes we want more don't we we're like no apologize again you offended my sensibility you know even though you know it wasn't right what he did but I guess he apologized yeah it is difficult isn't it that um and if it and if the apology is insincere that's another matter but where somebody realized they've done something stupid I mean the weirdest one that I've I've heard recently is the British Library the British Library have a blacklist of 300 authors and uh Carol Hughes the Widow of the poet Ted Hughes realized that her husband was on this list and when she asked for a justification as to why he's on a list of colonialists and slave Traders um she was told that in 1592 a relative of his not an ancestor of his had bought shares in the Africa Trading Company in time of Queen Elizabeth and therefore now the British Library apologized the apology was published in the guardian but let me tell you I've been trying to get that list from the British library for almost a year and they will not give it to me despite Freedom of Information because they don't you know and so we've got to this situation now well you've got the same name your name is gold well there was a man called gold once who said something racist so therefore we're not talking to you it it's it's gone out of all proportion um where we go from here I don't know but but it it does get kind of silly as to what we meant you know we're meant to be apologizing for something that somebody else did hundreds of years ago that we didn't even know about uh talking about Collective guilt it reminds me of the the changing of the like Roald Dahl texts um changing his words and things like that like I understand you could have a note at the beginning saying hey sensibilities have changed and this is a you know but it's historical document and Roald Dahl had some appalling views but and you can put a note at the beginning saying that if you want but to change his words to me that's really chilling it's really or I know this is overused as a word but it's very orwellian yeah and by the way George Orwell is on the British Library Blacklist oh for God's sake that there's nothing more orwellian than that do you know that for a fact it was published by The Guardian newspaper alongside an apology from the British Library so uh the British Library did not respond to that and and question it so yes I presume it to be true yeah Lord Byron and Oscar Wilde there's baddies terrible people that's just it's incredible that's just incredible Lord Byron was a bit of a scally rag he was a scallywag but but but you know so many of our artists if we're going to look into how their lives are and we're going to make moral judgments about how they behaved then there wouldn't be very many pictures left in that galleries I'm afraid you know that that's my primary subject art history and that the lives of the artists like Benvenuto Cellini for example in his autobiography explains that ground Diamonds Are a much better thing to put in somebody's food if you want to kill them than ground glass or Caravaggio who killed two people in Jewels you know there are some pretty ugly things out there um or Richard dad who in fact killed his own dad um but you know we we have to look at the work and we if we can understand the artist the person who did it but it doesn't mean that we should reject the work that they did I don't think no it just seems it just seems mad we don't learn from history um you're on today one of the reasons one of the things that we wanted to talk about today was um why Scientology is why of the most dangerous forms of brainwashing what what led you to want to talk about that today well uh the fiction writers Somerset more who's known for I know books like the razor's edge of human bondage um is incredible story rain um cynical old guy who went brainwashing in 1950 suddenly this word emerged in the west actually not through Edward Hunter as people keep telling us but so the Guardian newspaper in January 1950 other word was first used there you go to it um when this word emerged what he wanted to point out was that whatever the Chinese and maybe the North Koreans were doing and maybe the Russians were doing it had been done before and this wasn't new and he said that the most effective form of brainwashing ever devised by man was the spiritual exercises of Ignatius Loyola and this book is still in print it has what is called the nihil obstart of the Pope this particular translation given in 1963 that there is no objection to this book being published and read by Catholics it has some pretty I'm just going to grab a couple of things the whole book is is very interesting this was the it's from the 16th century The Counter Reformation um Ignatius Loyola is the founder of the Jesuits the Society of Jesus and so he puts people through visualizations you know they weren't invented in modern times so you have to imagine being in hell you can do that for me just imagine being in hell and you have to see and imagine those enormous fires and the souls as it were with bodies of fire you have to hear in imagination the shrieks and groans and the Blasphemous shouts against Christ Our Lord and all the saints and you have to smell in imagination the fumes of sulfur and the stench of Filth and Corruption and on and on so you've got these visualizations and the idea is basically you've converted to the Protestant faith and you're going to hell so by doing these exercises you can come back to the the true Faith um then he talks about penances so you've got to treat yourself badly you have to eat too little food that's a good start you have to S not sleep enough and um then the the third form is to chastise the body by inflicting actual pain on it that is done by wearing hair shirts or cords or iron chains by scourging or beating ourselves and by other kinds of harsh treatment now Baron sashifon masok hadn't written about masochism at this time but one does really wonder what these people were doing um then we have um and this this is where we come to brainwashing to arrive at complete certainty this is the attitude of mind we should maintain I will believe that the white object I see is black if that should be the decision of the hierarchical church for I believe that link in Christ Our Lord the bridegroom and his bride the church there is one and the Same Spirit ruling and guiding us for our Soul's good so I will I will believe that white is black if the church says so now this has a very direct link to Scientology um after I left and I don't think it's because I left but after I left Ron Hubbard introduced What's called the truth Rundown and um Chris Shelton did a talk on this uh thing I did in Toronto in 2015 and that was first time I'd heard about it and basically you make a complaint about so David miscavige or somebody in Scientology then you have to go into through this procedure where you come to understand that it didn't happen that you're wrong and that you now accept the truth is whatever you've been told now that is the most extreme form of brainwashing possible where um it's called ideology over experience by Robert J lifton where you become willing to um give up what you've actually experienced and know because the church whether it's a Catholic church or child Scientologist supposed Church insists that that's the way it is um with Scientology I'm working on a piece I'm doing a show with Eric Hundley next week and he brought up this idea um there's a book called chaos by a man called Tom O'Neill the times literary supplement called this book a masterpiece and um Eric said oh it says your your late friend Jolly West program Charles Manson and I'm like what are you talking about so I went often and read this book and it the the web of speculation that is there um but one thing that is essential and last week Psychology today pulled a paragraph from a piece Steve Hassan had written in which he said Charles Manson received 150 hours of Scientology auditing now I sent Psychology today this the day it happened I sent them the actual internal document from Scientology that says Charles Manson received 150 hours of Scientology auditing and got a response saying we don't have time to look at books and chapters so it was one page it was one line underlined it was a letter sent to Mary Sue Hubbard I as I say I'm an expert witness so I am allowed to submit documents as fact but Psychology today were like they might sue us you know they they might cost us money we we can't do that and in this case it was a female editor so Burke has to be slightly evil triumphs when men and women of good do nothing and you know that's generally what we see with Scientology that they they silence people through the threat of litigation thankfully that seems to have slowed down since they lost the time suit in 2011. which I'm told cost them 20 million dollars in legal fees and David miscavigent I think I'd rather keep the money you know I'm wasting time and it's not getting us any good press you know and this Danny Masterson stuff what are we gonna do about that you know um so this Charlie Manson issue is is a very big issue but the thought is that Charles Manson from the age of 12 into his 32 when he came out of prison 31-32 from the age of 12 till then he'd spent more time in institutions than out he was a small guy he was beaten up a lot he had a very hard time then in 1962 at McNeil Institute as he says in his own autobiography which is not mentioned at all in Tom O'Neill's book you know the fact that Manson wrote an autobiography should be interesting to a student of Manson and in there he four times mentioned Scientology and at one point says you know I got heavily into Dianetics and Scientology in scientology's own documents seized during the FBI's largest raids in the FBI's history in 1977. in their own documents there are four pieces one of which is oops we found out the Manson was involved how do we stop the public from getting this information the second is a write-up by Lanier Ramer who's the man who gave Manson this stuff um and then you have a write-up to Mary Sue Hubbard which is the thing that I sent the page from saying he did all of this stuff and then an affidavit from lania Rhema saying that he had no authorization from Scientology to give this to Manson but what happened in 1962 for Manson was that he learned how to control people you know that Tom O'Neill doesn't mention Scientology in his book instead he goes after my my late Chum Jolly West and builds this little fabric of speculation uh brilliant research book but but his speculation is is wrong plain and simple it's wrong and I can kind of will prove it next week but the idea that you can date somebody like Charlie Manson who's who's a little guy who's who's been picked on all of his life and he learns how to exert control over others by using Scientology because Scientology is a set of control techniques Hubbard there's there's no secret about it Hubbard talks about having 8C I had this perverse thing that he kept turning the infinity symbol upright and calling it an eight I don't know why it looks like an eight I suppose but he wrote lots of books called ate this and ate that and the idea is that so 8C means infinite control and what you're being taught as a Scientologist is how to use your intention to make another person do something which is a fundamental definition of magic of course and about as likely to happen and what you find as you said in the sea organization is that people will have been learned how to receive severe reality adjustments I'd never heard of these until my last year in Scientology when um I hired a guy who had been a Hubbard aide he'd worked directly with her but he was very famous I hired him for my little artist's agency and one day caught him screaming his head off at my wife because she hadn't sold a painting that week and he was like this far away from her telling her that she was trying to destroy me and trying to ruin the world at the top of his voice three days later next time I saw him I sat him down and went why did you do that you know where is it written that you should do that because in Scientology if it isn't written it isn't true so where's the policy where Hubbard explains to do that and he put his head in his hands and started weeping and he said Hubbard did it to us and after that you know I've now interviewed tens of people where Hubbard just had these Maniac rages you know this man who'd said he was going to help us all overcome trauma was you know throwing people into the sewage in Corfu Harbor from from his boat from 25 feet up into human sewage in the harbor he was putting a four-year-old in the chain Locker of the ship he was traumatizing people and he did it on an almost daily basis he was either in a you're a happy um sort of delirious mood or he was attacking somebody he was going for somebody and so that becomes a characteristic this is how infinite control is achieved you bully people until you break them and then they will keep you know that David miscavige kept all of these people what eight years in the hole in this double trailer Mike says that there were 140 people in there at one point and they're all these are the senior Executives of Scientology and they're living in there with two toilet cubicles going off and having showers when they're allowed and doing things like um cleaning the the floor with with a toothbrush you know and um basically being humiliated and dominated to make them slaves and I think if we look at the present situation of Scientology where quite evidently from the defectors we've seen really in the last 40 years the horrific conditions that people have submitted to so when Hubbard was making little films in 1977 none of which survive Millions were spent on these these films and even David miscavige is too embarrassed to show them to anybody they're so awful I saw a couple of them along the way but the crew there Hubbard decided that they weren't working hard enough so they were not only forbidden any pay and put onto a rice and beans diet which was quite normal they were told they couldn't have any toilet tissue so they had to go off and raid you know yellow page directories from you know phone boxes and things like that he as I say died with 648 million dollars 2 000 cameras a 24 track recording studio a full-size horse racing track Aberdeen angus bulls black swans he lived that way with Savile Row shirts and it didn't allow the crew toilet paper when you've reduced people to that level they are enslaved technically you know they're practically they're they're not you know they're earning a lot of money that's basically keeping David miscavige in um distilled water Blue Mountain Coffee and Camel cigarettes I it gets me both Hubbard and miscavige are asthmatics so and heavy smokers and again so there's a ventolin inhaler in one hand and a Camel cigarette in the other in the end and this is the Superhuman state that you've achieved you know you're an addict presumably it's it's got to be more complicated than than sort of bullying there's got to be a bit of status stuff going on and people want to and and you know this I know the Stanford Prison Experiment that's a bit flawed and it wasn't quite as good as people thought it was but there's a little bit of you know hierarchies and stuff I'd stop there on zimbardo's experiment I I think it's every bit as as good as it it's said to be there are only two complaints that I'm aware of um with Zim's work there and one of them is that one of the guards was coached to be more harsh there's a tape recording of that which I'm aware of I've heard um and it did happen um that tape of course we have because imodo released it we wouldn't have it otherwise he was perfectly open about the experiment um the other criticism is that the first person to be released from the experiment after two days um many years later about 25 years later said that he'd only said that he was freaked out to get out of the experiment well the reality is and and the contracts exist the contract he signed exists and it said you could leave at any time and you'd be paid the full money so there was no reason for him to make up the state that 25 years later he claimed to made up so I think I think the Stanford Prison Experiment does stand I think we we have to be cautious about it but um it's it's too easy to dismiss it well then you should you should give us a brief a very brief rundown of it just for people who don't know and how that might relate to the brainwashing and Scientology yeah um at Stanford University in I think 1971 but had an adversement for summer jobs and he wanted students to participate in in a an experimental study and they pulled together students they're all hippies none of them wanted to the idea was to separate them into jailers and prisoners none of them not one of them volunteered to be a jailer and so the the groups were made and what happened over a six day period was that the guards became ever more abusive towards the prisoners um for example having them mimic uh homosexual sex um calling them by numbers rather than by names um you know reducing the amount of food they had and the idea is that put into that context then anybody or almost anybody will break and we'll start to to you know to commit evil zimbardo was following on his friend Stanley milgram's Yale experiments on compliance which had just shown that if you said to people um the experiment wishes you to continue as if an experiment could have wishes people would 62 and a half percent of people were willing to shock somebody up to the maximum or they thought they were shocking somebody up to the maximum on a machine a hundred percent of people complied and were willing to shock somebody psychiatrists who are interviewed beforehand by Milgram who was a very clever Cove um said there was a about one percent of people would be compliant a hundred percent were compliant yeah I believe there are problems with that one as well aren't there the Milgram experiment there were also a lot of people taking maybe people are being Persnickety or panicity authenicity or or Persnickety um who knows yeah again because this is fundamental to the work I do I'm very familiar with these studies I've read obedience to Authority by Milgram um and I've read all of the I think all of the complaints that are being made the primary complaint is that no ethical review board would permit the Milgram experiment happen again because it it might have been damaging for the participants afterwards to realize what they'd done but as they were told afterwards that there were no shocks involved they hadn't hurt anybody and I don't believe there are any reports of Trauma from and he did the experiment 17 times in different settings taking it further and further away from Yale you know to see why people were complying with authority so I think his conclusion is sound um yes you couldn't run the experiment anymore but it was run what's more um it was said or maybe people knew they were complying one of the follow-ups to Milgram and I don't approve of this but one of the follow-ups actually used puppies and did give them shocks and people were willing to comply people were willing to do this because the experiment demands that you continue and so that's what's going on with Scientology isn't it really we have an absorption of the the techniques I'm pretty sure that Ron Hubbard he um was on the run from possible extradition to France and he lay low in in Queens in New York 1972-73 and I'm pretty sure that in that period he read um Robert lifton's book on thought reform in modern China which lays out the Chinese approach to Breaking people taming people making people compliant and I think we can say looking at Chinese society that it was pretty damn successful I would recommend to anybody the the documentary one child Nation to see how the Chinese people you know and there were Mass executions their form of brainwashing there were also at least two and a half million people executed during the 1950 to 53 um brainwashing camps the thought reform camps which of course re-emerged in xinjiang not so very long ago and tip what what happens in that situation what lifton found he interviewed 25 people who'd been through this this process they were largely Catholic priests and so it does not represent what happened to the two classes of Chinese people that went through the camps one of whom were what Marx called the lump and proletariat the Ragged proletariat and Marx Engels Lenin and Stalin and George Bernard Shaw and D.H Lawrence all believed that you should kill the lump and proletariat it's an astonishing statement isn't it but it's true George Bernard Shaw D.H Lawrence believed in genocide for eugenic reasons Mao came along and said no that they are the victims the lump and proletariat and they were put through camps prostitutes thieves Beggars Sorcerers people like that they were put through camps to be have it explained to them that they'd misunderstood the reality of the world the reality of the world is that the rich people are forcing us to do these horrible things so they went through one set of camps but then the landlord class went through another set and many of them were executed as part of the process the idea that brainwashing program is purely psychological is nonsense the brainwashing program was physical people were beaten people were beaten to death even in the the camps for the the Ragged poor people were beaten to death despite there being instructions that they should be kind to these people this happened so their people were Shackled people were deprived of food there were all sorts of things that went on and of course in the sea organization we see those things too we see people being Shackled that's happened we see people put into the labor camp the rehabilitation project Force where they may not speak unless spoken to where they eat scraps left over from the very poor food that the general crew get where we see mattresses taken away and you're put into what's called Pig's birthing there's a very strong physical control that's happening over the top of the very strong psychological control now as a public member of Scientology never live in member I was only subjected to the psychological controls um there are a couple of times in a shouted that I shouted back I didn't realize I wasn't meant to you know um but but that was it I you know I was very very lucky um but it means that I understand the psychological processes now when I I used to go to the states in the 80s and 90s and I talked with people that you were working with cult groups it was very common I've heard it in Europe too that they'd be willing to work with people of any group at all but for scientologists scientologists were just too complicated because you know we're Transcendental Meditation has two procedures um chanting the name of a demon or deity until you get high or um playing LeapFrog on your own um which can of course fracture your coccyx I talked with a woman who in Transcendental Meditation and she'll been in pain from that day to this as a concerned so they're stupid you know psychic hopping but they have two techniques and a lot of literature around it but two techniques Scientology has two thousand and when you look at those techniques they are classical hypnotic techniques they're things that you you know when Stephen Hassan first sort of demonstration of training routine zero which every Scientologist does where you sit and confront a person you're not meant to say stare but you look them in the eyes for some hours the bulletin says and of course you get What's called the gansfelt effect you you know things seem to melt and you know things become strange because when you don't have sensory input the brain starts to fill in starts to create stuff so if you sit in a a silent dark room for 10 minutes Darren Brown did some stuff with us people will start thinking that things are moving in the room they'll start hearing sounds and it's all filling in it's like the feedback of of the brain itself so you get somebody to do one of these things when Steve first saw this drill he said this is the most overt use of hypnosis I have ever seen in a cult and that's coming from a guy who spent a year with bandler and grinder studying neuro-linguistic programming and then became an ericksonian trainer so he knows what he's talking about when you look at many of the and Charlie Manson you know that stare that Famous Stare that's the Scientology tr0 stir that you're seeing the Thousand Mile star you then have a lot of processes and procedures as interesting you have about 2 000 processes and procedures which take apart everything about you um one of the things that Tom O'Neill says about Jolly West is that he finds this little note where Jolly said that he's found out how to implant false memories and he puts that forward as if that was something really revelatory I did that on a daily basis in Scientology you get people to remember their past lives and they tell the same ridiculous stories repeatedly Karen De La carrier told me that she'd had 200 people who'd been Jesus in an earlier life yeah they've always been like Napoleon yeah and and that's that's yeah that's what you'll get that that and you know the proof of their past lives would be so easy to do that when somebody says you know I was at the Battle of agincour in 1415. you say which side were you on and if they say the French you say speak to me speak to me in the French of of the year 1415. it's no it doesn't work that way it doesn't work that way does it no it's it's always like oh I you know I don't have the same memories I don't have this I don't have that and then you're like well you know what that's not the same person then is it I don't know we're running we're running low um on time but um where can people go and I know where where can people go and find all your stuff I I've no I've said it at the beginning but come on I've written a variety of books um if if somebody wants to take a deep dive into Scientology and and it's past um let's sell these people a piece of Blue Sky we've just released an audio book of Scientology The Cult of greed which is a a straightforward overview of of some of the most damaging um Scientology documents and and was it it was originally a lecture that I gave with the idea that people in the audience wouldn't you know have the Scientology dictionary in their heads and understand you know what an arc breaking missed withholders um and who needs to frankly um I've my channel has over 400 videos on um my subject matter essentially is authoritarianism so it's not Scientology it's not Cults it's not politics it's not terrorism it's not gangsters it's all of those things you know including human trafficking pedophile grooming and how those things work from a psychological perspective that you can find in my book opening our minds um which my friend Rachel left said should be in on every High School reading list you know every kid should read it because these are things that are not actually any of them being taught in our schools which are by their nature authoritarian they are not Democratic in the way they function their their bully systems um they don't need to be and it's not good for kids you're absolutely right it's a pleasure it was a pleasure talking to you it's always a pleasure talking to you John and people please please do if you do one thing do support my guest always support my guests go to John ATAC family and friends and they will put links to what you were just talking about the audio book and the book and you know we put all of that below that you know support my amazing guest you know you know the drill everyone and keep watching stuff on this channel things are popping up here and enjoy them because there's loads of stuff there for you so keep watching

Channel: Andrew Gold

Views: 95,577

Keywords: andrew gold, on the edge with andrew gold, on the edge, podcast, interviews, scientology, tom cruise, cults, jon atack

Id: TIwAEvzJZv0

Length: 56min 8sec (3368 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 03 2023