How I got into and out of Scientology ===================================== My New Found Religion --------------------- I got into Scientology in late 1991 or early 1992. I don’t remember exactly. I was got in by a friend of mine at the time. He had enthusiastically embraced it and even given up his computer contracting job to enter it full time. I was sceptical. But I met a friend of his who had persuaded him to try Scientology (who is now a prominent freezoner) and my interest grew. So I went along to where my friend was based at the London Org, on Tottenham Court Road, to find out more about it. The guy in charge at the time, the ED John Turzak, was an intelligent and pleasant guy. I liked him and chatted with him for a time. And I ended up enrolling on a Dianetics seminar after reading the Dianetics book my friend had leant me. I was surrounded by people there who were keen and positive in wanting to improve their lives and those of others and I felt good. Despite having a religious upbringing and rejecting Christianity I had still hoped to find a more practical form of religion free from blind faith and nonsense beliefs. Something loosely scientific in the sense of being testable and workable. I thought I had found it with Scientology. I was very mistaken.

Disillusionment Sets In ----------------------- Stage by stage, my disillusionment with Scientology was to grow. It was an accumulation of many things. I was getting Book One auditing but the promises in the Dianetics book were not materialising. I did not feel any better and didn’t have an improved memory and neither did I become immune to the colds and flu that yearly lost me so much time and wages (and also gives me an opportunity to write this now). So I eventually said I did not want to go on with Dianetics auditing. I was feeling rotten. Much worse than when I came through the door. So then the ED persuaded me that it was professional metered auditing that I required.

I was rather annoyed that this had not been made clear to me as a likely outcome at the start. (In the US, this is called "bait and switch"

fraud). The option of "professional" auditing was too expensive so it was recommended I should train as an auditor and so I did. It takes ages to train as an auditor and the progress you make is so much less than you hoped for such that after a few months you reach the point where you want to give up. Add to that the constant bugging of you by registrars and IAS people wanting huge amounts of money from you every other day.

Add to that the standing and cheering of the LRH poster which was an element of what I had rejected about Christianity. Add to that the growing feelings that these Clears and OTs who surround you and whose state you aspire to seem no better than you and perhaps a good deal worse off and it all eats away at your resolve. So the expensive option of "professional auditing" I had previously declined, I now opted for. By that time I was living in France and I was promised, nay "guaranteed", that if I went to St Hill for "professional" auditing that I would get more gains per hour of auditing than I had ever got from Scientology thus far. So I took time off work and went. I went in with a positive frame of mind. At last I was going to get "moving up The Bridge".

"Professional" Auditing at St Hill, UK -------------------------------------- I had gone to St Hill thinking everything would at last go right for me with Scientology. I was elated. But when I got into the auditing it was nothing like what I had hoped for. The auditing was hellishly boring and made me feel worse by the hour. My "professional" auditor was nothing of the sort. This member of "the most ethical group on the planet" was falsifying my session TA. I thought this would be plainly obvious at exams and the C/S would be bound to spot it so I didn’t worry about it.

Being audited, you do not put yourself in the position of being the auditor or C/S otherwise you will not be being a PC, so I trusted these "professionals" to spot the problem and get it ironed out. That’s what "exams" is there for, after all, and I trusted in the system. But most people at exams looked as beat up as I did. You were "GIs" if you could force a smile through your discomfort within 15 seconds. And so the auditing went on and on until I could stand it no longer. I "blew" and went back to France. I was in a very sorry state. My world had fallen apart. They came over to "handle" me and I perked up a bit. There was, after all, Flag - the Mecca of technical perfection - Ron’s own org if all else failed. I was dispirited and angry and very upset but I had not totally given up.

I Return to England and the Internet ------------------------------------ When I got back to England one of the first things I did was to get myself an Internet account. Things had blossomed with the Internet since I had been away. I was warned by the people at the London Org that there was a lot of entheta on the Internet. I didn’t worry. I could handle it and see it for what it was. If need be I could use the knowledge I had gained and "get into ARC" with some of these misguided people and "point them to Source". The first site I tried was the Dianetics site. I wanted to see that volcano erupting. It was exciting to think that Scientology had embraced this new media and form of expression. The trouble is my connection to the Internet was so slow that I gave up waiting for the volcano image to load and tried out a search engine instead. I typed in the word "Scientology" and waited.

Xenu ---- I kept finding references to "Xenu" in connection with Scientology. I was both amused and perplexed since these sites were giving the impression that at the heart of Scientology lay a belief in a secret space-alien galactic overlord called Xenu who has brought people from planets over to Earth in DC-8 space-planes 75 million years ago, had stacked them around volcanoes and nuked them. And that the souls of these dead space-aliens inhabit our bodies to this day and get exorcised at huge expense in Scientology. It was the most bizarre and stupid thing I had ever come across. I thought that the Merchants of Chaos must have dropped LSD before making up that one. But the story was consistent and led to my reading a collection of Dennis Erlich’s posts on a.r.s. In these posts he ably explained the subject of "body thetans" being the ex-Flag Cramming Officer. This, quite clearly, was not the religion I thought I had joined. I still could not believe all this. I arranged to meet the freezone guy that had gotten my friend into Scientology and asked him directly about it. He confirmed it. But I still found it hard to believe because it would mean that HE believed it and talked to these space-alien "body thetans" himself. I was, in a sense, asking advice from a madman. But he leant me a tape called "Assists" in which L. Ron Hubbard talks about the Xenu incident. So I listened to this tape.

Several times, in fact. My picture of what these OT levels were about was forming all the time and becoming clearer. Scientology - the self-improvement movement I thought I had joined, was, at its core, a barmy UFO cult. And these OTs I had looked up to over the course of years, were clearly very deluded and possibly totally mad. What little doubt about these revelations remained would later be shattered by the lawyer Helena Kobrin when I had the audacity to put some of Hubbard’s quotes talking about this bizarre story as well as my own version of it (the now famous "Xenu" flyer) on my own web site. It was promptly closed down through legal threats from her. She even claimed the Xenu flyer, that I had spent days writing, was her client’s copyrighted property.

Enough is Enough ---------------- I demanded an explanation from St Hill about this Xenu nonsense. To be fair, they certainly didn’t deny it. It was perhaps the first time that anybody on Scientology staff had been honest with me. I demanded my money on account to be returned to me. I would never get back the tens of thousands I had donated to put WIS? books in school to help them become an accepted religion in the UK but at least the money that wasn’t spent I could have back and use to some sort of useful purpose. If I had invested all the money instead of giving it to them then I would have been guaranteed a pleasant retirement. At least I could get some of it back. But then they started putting conditions on it. The WIS? book tells you that the only condition on getting a refund is that you can no longer receive any more "services" from them. Very fair. But when it comes time to ask for your refund then the truth is very different. You have to do a routing form that involves more "auditing". Well I certainly didn’t want a bunch of nut-culters fiddling with my mind any more so I declined that. And then to get back MY money that they were keeping for me I had to sign an agreement not to interfere with them nor to sue them. Well I was keen to get my money back. I knew enough about contract law to know that this was unenforceable as a contract so I signed and got my money back minus the many tens of thousands I had donated towards their cause during my involvement, believing them to be a force for social good.

Picketing is Fun ---------------- So despite their "agreement" I started picketing them. I got a threatening legal letter from one of their cult lawyers in the UK, called Hodkin, that if I didn’t desist they would take legal action against me and recover costs as well. I was to send them a letter stating that I would comply with this within seven days or they would commence legal actions. Trouble is my life was in such a mess at that time and I didn’t get round to opening the letter for another year. I had put it in a junk-mail box. So much for their threat. And so much for the integrity of that particular representative of the UK’s legal profession.

If you are a Scientologist reading this --------------------------------------- So there is my story. I am sure parts of it will be familiar to you. At least you know what Scientology is really all about now. One day you will leave like I did. I hope your own family don’t badger you into getting "exit counselling" or something like that. I never had any and wouldn’t have wanted it. It would be far too restimulative of the registrars constantly bugging you to donate money and to sign up for new courses. After you have been out for a couple of years then things will straighten out. You will not even be able to believe you fell for the nonsense. Here is a third rate science-fiction writer with a technology to help mankind (and to make himself money, of course). It is obvious that it will all be a fable and buried at the heart of it will be science-fiction nonsense. I can see this now with hindsight. I could not see it at the time, though.

Looking Back ------------ Looking back, it was the feeling of membership and the invisible pressure towards conformity and common purpose with my fellows that blinded me to the obvious. I don’t regard myself as having been brainwashed or hypnotised. I think my mother is right about me. She says I’m too trusting.

Roland Rashleigh-Berry (Copyright 8th March 2000. Permission is granted to anyone to reproduce this document in any form without permission from the author).

-- "I notice that we all believe that Venus has a methane atmosphere and is unlivable. I almost got run down by a freight locomotive the other day -- didn't look very uncivilized to me." - L. Ron Hubbard, "Between Lives Implants" lecture, SHSBC #317. 23 July 1963.

http://www.xs4all.nl/~xemu/rams/Venusloc.ram

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