Danny Jones Podcast - #55 - The Making Of David Miscavige | Ron Miscavige

Episode Date: October 2, 2020

Ron Miscavige is the father of David Miscavige who is the leader of the church of scientology.  Ron and his family joined Scientology in 1970, and he worked for the Sea Org for almost 27 years.  It's also worth mentioning Ron signed a Billion year contract with the church.  This is really a tragic story of how a father became disconnected from his son, and then you throw in the whole scientology aspect of it and how the family originally got into this mess which eventually led to a broken bond between father and son.  https://www.therealronmiscavige.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello there, world. After the overwhelming response we got from podcast number 68 with Mike Rinder about Scientology, I got the opportunity to speak with today's guest, Ron Miscavage. Ron is the father of David Miscavage, who is also the leader of the Church of Scientology. Ron and his family joined Scientology in 1970, and he worked for the C-org for almost 27 years. It's also worth mentioning Ron signed a billion-year contract with the church. This was a super fascinating podcast, and it gets really good towards the end. So without further ado, please welcome Ron Miscavage.

So who are you? I'm Ronald T. Miscavage. Ronald T. Miscavage. Good morning. Good morning. Are we on the air already? Yeah, we're on the air, man. Oh, what the hell, huh? I love you.

I love your, I like your jacket, man. That's nice. Is that, what is that, is that suede? It's, it's a, it's a blast from the past. Listen, when I was a young man, um, growing up in, you know, the 50s, corduroy jackets were the thing. And I loved it because it's a little bit dressy, not too dressing, but it's comfortable. Yeah. Because it's just corduroy.

It's not like a heavy material. So I found some on, uh, online. And I got a, this is a maroon one. I got a moss green one and a navy blue one. And I love them. I use them for gigs. And, you know, sometimes you have lighting on a gig and that lighting is a little bit hot unless they're using LED lights. So it's a comfortable jacket all around.

I need to get some corduroy suits in my life. Maybe some corduroy jacket, maybe some shorts or some pants or something. You don't really wear jackets. Yeah, I know. And down in Florida, where you are, you have an opportunity to wear it. now i just want to check on something does it look like i'm looking right at you because i am on the screen but my you're looking a little bit to the right of me so you about that that's now you're looking right at me yep okay so i have to get in that position because you can just move my uh my

screen over like you know what i mean like the picture of me maybe move it over to to your left a little bit more but if i do that it's going to ruin what i have set up buddy i don't want to i don't want to No, you're fine. Don't even worry about it. Don't even worry about it. You're a little good. Okay. So, yeah, I, uh, I just did a podcast, uh, about a month ago with the guy by the name of Mike Rinder.

Uh, he was a top executive in Scientology. And we talked a lot about your son, David. Now, Danny, let me just interrupt you for a second. I know Mike Rinder since he was 15 years old. Have you really? that's how old friends we are because I had my family

at St. Hill, England and his dad and mom brought him and his brother, I guess, to St. Hill. And I met him when he was 15 years old. We have a very long and enduring friendship.

And I love him as a person. He had a hell of a job with the church where he had to do things that, of course, he regrets now, but when you're with that cult, you do things that later on, you look back and say,

God damn it, man. I was really, I was really, my mind had been sucked in by somebody and changed into something I didn't want to be. And, but, you know, Mike's just a wonderful person. I got to say that. What a wild story that was. The story that he told me and just the impact that Scientology has made on this world, the documentaries that have been made, the people's lives that's affected. your son is your son has made a huge impact on this world and on lots of people's lives

yeah i know and uh it's not necessarily a favorable one if you get my drift okay yeah absolutely so uh can you give me sort of just like a brief background on who you are where you and your family came from and how you guys got into this world of science Yeah. And basically, I am, I was born and raised in Pennsylvania in a little coal mining town called Mount Carnival, Pennsylvania, except in the northeast part of the state. And it was a wonderful little town to grow up in. It was one mile square, exactly. Streets were laid out in checkerboard fashion, easy to get around. You know, if you knew you were going to a certain place, you knew. The named streets were running a certain way and the avenues run another way. But the delightful thing about grown up there is this. You had immigrants from Italy, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Ireland, Germany, just about every country in Europe. So this town was like a little Europe.

And you had this gathering of people of different cultures. and because of that, I think we learn how to tolerate each other. Do you see what I'm saying? Because every, like a person coming from a certain country, they have certain idiosyncrasies or certain moral codes and stuff, but living with all these different types of people and different religions, as an example,

the Russians who were there, went to a Greek Orthodox church, whereas the Italians, the Polish, and most of the people went to the Roman Catholic Church. A little bit different ceremony, but sometimes we'd go to East Church to see what it was like. It was a lot of tolerance of a lot of things. And one of the best things about growing up there was when they had block parties. You know what the block party is, right? Yeah.

You know, people come there and they bring their favorite food and stuff. You would have delicacies from all these different ethnicities. groups and it was just out of this world. The town, you could have all the fun you wanted to have and you could stretch the law as long as you didn't break it. Okay? That's the type of raising I had.

It was very laissez-faire. I'll be honest with you. And even then, I can remember going up into the attic of our house and we had a three-story house. And that last floor, we kept winter clothes and it was a library shelf there. And on that shelf was all these different books that my dad had gotten. And I used to go after, even as a little kid,

and pulled books off the shelf. And I was always searching for something. I didn't know what I was searching for, but I was looking maybe for answers. I can remember pulling off a book called The Prophet by Gibran. Have you ever heard of that? No. Okay, it's a philosophical book that this guy wrote.

And even at my young age, I got something out of it, not a hell of a lot, because I couldn't understand some of the words. But that search carried with me. It carried with me throughout my life. And when I was a young man, I got out of high school. And, well, of course, I was a musician. I learned how to play a trumpet when I was 11 years old. And I was playing in bars for money when I was 13 years old.

And I remember in those days, We played a five-hour job. We got two bucks an hour, so that was $10 for five hours of music. And in those days, you can go to J.C. pennies and buy a pair of jeans for a buck and a half. So as a kid, it was good money for me. You know what I mean? And I got out of high school, and I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I was playing some gigs, and I finally met a Marine Corps recruiter, right on the main street in my town.

And after talking to him for about a half an hour. I decided I wanted to be a United States Marine. Well, I was only 17 years old, so my dad had a sign for me. So I can remember taking a recruiter up to my dad's insurance office. He had an insurance business. And we asked him a sign. He said, Ronnie, are you sure you want to do this? They're the first ones in.

I said, yeah, Pop, I want to be in the United States Marine. So I joined, and I'm not going to make this long story long because it's quite, extensive but I can remember going to Paras Island South Carolina where they had the boot camp and the first night there was like a living nightmare I thought to myself this is the worst goddamn mistake I've ever made in my life did you ever see the movie full metal jacket of course that is how boot camp is that is not an exaggeration well several months later I'm graduating boot camp and I thought to myself, I can make myself do anything.

They turned me from an undisciplined civilian who had a hard time getting up in the morning into somebody who could discipline himself into doing anything he wanted to in life. And I'm going to tell you, that has helped me my entire life. And it probably in some way impelled me toward being able to join Scientology

and stick it out as long as I did. I know that seemed like a little bit of a lengthy story, but that's what I was leading up to. Are you tracking with me so far? Yes, I am. I'm following you. Okay. Now, how did we get in Scientology? Well, I was working with a friend of mine called him.

His name was Nelson Sandy. He was a singer, and of course, I played trumpet, but at that point, we had a job selling. Nelson Sandy was the guy that said to me back in the 60s, I used to be a doctor, but I lost my patience. It's still funny, all right? We come off to stage one time. We're playing a gig in Greenwood Lakes, New York. And we went over to the bar, and a guy come over and said,

Nelson, you're a great singer. Can I buy you a drink? He said, no, but can I have the money? He was really fast on the uptake with a lot of shit like that, okay? So now, Nelson said to me one day, how would you like to make an extra $100,000 this year? And I said, hey, that's a great idea. What the hell are you talking about?

He introduced me to a pyramid marketing scheme called Holiday Magic. Okay, I don't know if you ever heard that word before, have you? Multi-level, a pyramid scheme? Yeah, well, Amway is that, if you know what I mean. Yeah, yeah, I know what it is. Multi-level marketing is another word for it. Yeah, exactly. So now, I got involved in it.

Make a long story short, I got involved, and I purchased products, and become a master distributor. And we used to have opportunity events where we take people into a motel room and have a chalkboard up and tell them how this works and recruit people to do it. And that was the business. Get people how they can get rich.

Exactly, which actually is a bullshit story because the people who get rich are the people that started it. Everybody else's bottom feeders, they're on top and they're making all the, they're scraping the good stuff right at the top. So we're at this opportunity meeting, and I am standing next to a girl who were teamed up with. There's Nelson and myself and a girl, Kathy, and Jim Herne was another guy. We became a part of a team, kind of a marketing team.

She's talking to somebody, and I'm talking to another person, and this guy said to her, I'm a Scientologist. I said to the guy I was talking to, excuse me, I said, what is that? For whatever reason, the name rang a bell. Don't know why, but it rang a bell. But you had never heard it before. Nope. So I pinned him down for about a half an hour. And he told me all these things.

And I was sucking it in like a sponge that you'd throw in the water, just sucking the water. And I think, what the hell is this, man? This sounds incredible to me. and he said, you know, you can become more able. I said, well, I'm pretty able now. He says, well, do you think you could become more able? I said, yeah, everybody can become more able. He says, well, then to that degree, you're unable.

Very tricky. That's very clever, you know. So I thought, well, he's right. So I said, well, how do you mean? He said, well, there's things you can do. Like you never have to take another aspirin as long as you live. I said, what hell are you talking about? So he gave me this little thing to do when you have a headache, and it'll go away.

I said, well, I don't have a headache right now, so I can't even try it out. But it intrigued me. I'll be honest with you. So now, maybe a week later, I'm driving down Route 130 in New Jersey. I raised my family in South Jersey, right across from Philadelphia, basically. I'm driving down Route 130, and I realize I have a headache. And he told me what to do. So I thought, okay, well, I'm going to try this out.

I tried it out. My headache went away. I said, hey, I got to try this. Now, I started going to a place in Woodbury, New Jersey, where there's a guy by the name of Frank Ogle. He had a group, and he used to. Did it work? Did it work when you had the headache? It went right.

It went away immediately. And it just blew me away. I thought, hey, wait a minute. Wow. What specifically was it? What specifically was it that he told you to do? Well, I guess I should tell you, but I can tell you this. If it works, it'll work sometimes.

Okay. But, yeah. In other words, this may seem so stupid, you're going to say, are you joking? Here's what it is. He said, if you have a headache, go and look at yourself in a mirror and give the headache to the person in the mirror. and he said i says well what if there's no mirror he's okay well maybe if you're out some place and there's no mirror get a mental image picture of yourself looking at a person in a mirror at yourself in a mirror and give your headache to the person in the mirror in the mental image picture

that's what i that's what i did when i was driving my car and i am telling you and i'm telling you this is not a puff piece for scientology by any means but this actually happened i did that and And immediately one second later, my headache was gone. Okay? I know it's when that happened, I thought, wait a minute, I got to check this out. That seems like a, that seems like a great thing to know. I think it seems like a great tool to use. Well, I don't ever get headaches anymore.

And I stopped getting headaches, I guess in around that time. So I've never had another chance to take it because I just don't ever get headaches. Now, well, it could be I exercise almost every day of the month. Maybe I'll take two or three days off. I wonder if that would work with other kinds of aches. I don't know, but you might try it. But there's a whole theory behind it. And I really don't want to go into it because it'll get into the realm of, wait a minute,

what is the guy talking about? And it's just rather than you get into it, I can tell you, that was the simplicity of what I did and that worked. But that impelled me to go, there's a purpose enough for telling you that because that then got me to go to this place that Frank Ogle was having in his cafeteria

in Woodbury, New Jersey. It was either on a Tuesday or Wednesday night. And he'd get a whole bunch of people there. And he would say, now, tell me what you think about such and such. Or what do you think about this? And people would originate their answers. and then he'd tell you how you shouldn't think that way.

That's not what Scientology is these days. But he would also do mini miniature courses like in communication. So I went there, I think for about a month straight on, like that's four Tuesdays or Wednesdays. And at the end of that, I figured, all right, well, I got the idea of it. And the whole idea of it is try to be at causing life instead of effect. And it improved my communication somewhere. So that was my first taste with Scientology. Now, let's backtrack to when David was born in 1960 on April 30th.

He was born in a hospital in Lower Bucks County, Pennsylvania, which is just a little bit north of Philadelphia. And he was born with an asthmatic condition. That was horrible. And I remember the day he was born, and he's a twin sister, Denise. these two beautiful babies were born and I just you know I felt this overwhelming love

or you have a child you told me this when we were talking about this yeah there's that feeling that you have to wear this new person coming into life and unless you've had children you don't know what it's like but to a social person like yourself or myself it's it's a moment I think now his asthmatic condition was terrible he would turn blue trying to catch his breath and I was at my wits end trying to figure out something I could do to help him. I would take him to a pediatrician and the pediatrician would give him a shot of adrenaline and that would bring him back to where he could breathe regularly. But I tried all kinds of oddball ideas.

I mean, did you get him an inhaler? Of course we had all that stuff. But when it hits, it's just, it's a hell of a thing getting him out of it. I'll tell you what I did one time because I didn't know what to do, and I'd try everything. It was a wintertime, and he had this attack coming on, and he was right in it where you can't breathe out. You can take it in, but you just can't seem to get your breath out. So I took him upstairs. I took him in the bathroom.

I took off all of his clothes. I took off all of mine. I actually did this show. I'm going to tell you, this is how desperate I was. I stepped in the shower. We had a stand-up shower there, and I put the water on warm. I'm holding them in my arms. And I said, David, listen, kid, I'm not doing this to hurt you because I'm with you.

So here we go. I turned off the hot water, and that fucking cold water come out like ice cubes. Hit both of us. We both started going, I took him out, rubbed him down with a Turkish towel. He was over the asthmatic attack. Wow. of shit that I used to have to do to get him out of it. Okay.

And I was in time? A little kid, maybe seven or eight years old, something like that, six years old. Anyway, and another thing I did is this. I used to take him in a garage. I had weights out in the garage and I'd make him lift weights if he started coming on. Sometimes it would work. Other times if it was so much. Do you think it was like the fact that you were kind of shocking him with something like that,

like lifting weights or getting, you know, freezing to death in the shower, kind of just get your mind off what's going on inside your body? Well, it takes your attention off the other thing, and it puts your attention on the fact, mind you, I didn't stand them in there, and I held them in my arms, so we both got that. And those fucking ice cubes coming out of that shower.

Oh, yeah. I mean, Philly is cold in the wintertime, and that water was probably just a degree above freezing, you know? No, I'll tell you where I got the idea. And God damn, this is like, okay, well, we're going this direction because this is all leading to a point, though, okay? Yeah. Okay, now, I'm in the Marine Corps. And I did boot camp in Parris Island.

And then the Korean War was over. So they said, what do you want to do? And where do you want to go? And I said, I wouldn't mind going to Quantico, Virginia. Instead of going to Quantico, Virginia, I had to go to Advanced Combat Training in Camp, Platoon, North Carolina, which was good. And it was very tough. As a matter of fact, I think physically it was a little tougher than boot camp. But anyway, I ended up in Quantico, and I have a job there working in a place called Schools Demonstrations Troops.

What this was was a battalion of Marines. We had various companies. We had a machine gun company, an infantry company, a communications company, a logistics company. And I worked in battalion headquarters. the whole purpose of this battalion was to demonstrate war problems to marine officers because Quantico, Virginia is where they trained officers in the United States Marine Corps. So this battalion of men would go out in the field and demonstrate various war problems and the second lieutenant's to be would be there observing this and learning from it.

what I did is I had to keep statistics on everything that happened in that battalion that day. Like how many men were out in which out camp? Like I think Camp Geiger was one of them, Camp Upshur. How many men ate there? How many men were on leave? How many men were on unofficial leave? And I had to compile a complete logistical report and get it down to battalion headquarters. by noon.

Okay? This is a tough job, and I learned how to do it quickly, and because of that, that was the rest of my day. I was free to do anything I wanted to. So that's what I was doing. Just give you a color of what my life was like,

and I had to get some dental work done. So I went down to the dentist, which was in the main side, had some dental work done, and a couple days later, at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, my entire face went into extreme pain. It was like somebody put me in an iron mask.

You know, that thing they had in the medieval days where they'd push this and knives it would be in one of your face. I'm telling you, it was horrible. I went to see the dentist the next day, and I said, look, here's what's happening. And you've got to help me. He says, oh, I know what it is. That's facial neurology. I said, well, how do you handle it?

He said, well, we don't know how to handle it. But here, you gave me some aspirins. I thought, what the fuck is this? You give it a name, and that's it? So I went back to the barracks, came on. I took the aspirin. It didn't work. I went down to the PX, and I bought a bottle of bourbon.

I took it back, a nice slug in a glass, put me, laid in bed and went to sleep. I was doing this for about three days, and I thought, Jesus Christ, I'm going to become an alcoholic. I can't continue to do this. So I went the next day and sure enough it came on again. I put on my utilities, which is your work clothes, and I walked out to the air station base, which was about an hour, about a mile away, sorry. I go into the place where they had weights and I'm in extreme pain. I figure I'm going to lift weights.

I'm going to do some goddamn thing. So there was a guy there and I says, hey, you want to lift with me? And he says, yeah, so we were going to spot each other. We ended up working on for six months together. So I'm on a bench and I'm doing a bench press, okay? So I do one set of the bench press, hand it to him. He does a set. I'm doing the second set.

I says, here, take the weight. The pain went away. I had no face pain. So I thought to myself, maybe if when you're experiencing something like a pain or some duress, if you could do something to forcibly take your attention off of it, it might go away because that just happened to me. So I concluded this was, I'm like 18 years old at that point.

I had this theory that pain in order for it to exist has to be fed life by the person receiving it, which I thought was pretty fucking good because that handled that pain and I never got to facial neurology again. Now, let's get up to where David has asthmatic attacks, all right? Frank Ogle gave what's called auditing sessions. Are you familiar with that term?

Yeah, auditing. It's kind of like a lie detector test they put you through and they ask you questions. Yeah. You use an e-meter, which is like a light detector. Right. But it's counseling, okay? They hook you up to this electronic thing, and you hold these two like metal rods or whatever, and they ask you questions.

Exactly. That's exactly what it is. I think most of the audience watching this probably knows about it if they've seen, you know, other Scientology programs. But anyway, I thought, you know what? I'm going to see if Frank Ogle can give David. one of these sessions and maybe, just maybe, somehow it'll work like my lifting weights got my attention off it. Maybe this auditing session can take his attention off of it. So I take

David down and he meets Frank Ogle and I said, Frank, there you go. He can help him. He says, well, we're going to sure try. He takes him in a room about 45 minutes later. David walks out, he's smiling, he's bright. I say, what happened? He says, dad, he's, I'm handled. He's, you're kidding me. He says, no. He says, I'm handled.

Now, that was a moment for me because he never had another severe attack as a child. He would get asthmatic attacks, but there were never as severe as it were before Frank Ogle took him in for that auditing session. Now, how can an auditing session have that kind of effect on you? How much do you think the mind has to do with how you feel and think and are? 100% of everything. Okay. Well, that's exactly what you address when you go into these.

Listen, before I go any further, I'm not advising people to join Scientology, okay? Because there is some good to it, but the bad far outweighs the good. I am telling you, there are beginning courses that you do, like the communication course. I will tell you, I've benefited from that ever since the first day I took it. But you started getting into the other stuff and it turns into horseshit and you're going to be out a lot of money

and you're going to have your family disconnected from you and your friends if you talk out against them. So believe you want them to... Yeah, there's a lot of wacky shit like, you know, worshiping a galactic overlord Zinu that once you get into the depths of it, like we'll cover this later in this podcast. But the beginning part,

of it, the part of Scientology that hooks you, there's a lot of benefit to it. There's a lot of, you know, eliminating your demons, getting rid of all the negative influences your life, you know, getting shit done. I'll tell you, you're right. This is the hook. That beginning is the hook, and I'll show you how that works then, right? But let's get back to David now, okay? So now, never had another severe attack.

At that point, I decided I'm going to get my whole family in this. So you think the auditing session taught him how to use his mind a different way? No. No, it doesn't teach you that. But probably what happened is this. It gets you to realize that you had something, if not everything, to do with the position that you're in. As an example, let's try a little analogy here. A guy's living in a swamp. And every year, he gets swamp fever. And maybe about once or twice every two years, he gets bitten by a snake. And he makes it to the doctor to get the snake poison taken out and he lives. Now, Scientology is not going to teach you how to cure yourself of snake bites or swamp fever. But it might get you to realize why did you move to the swamp in the first place?

You see what I'm saying? Why did you put yourself in arms way? That might not be a correct analogy for what happened with David. But I'm telling you, it gets you to come to more of a causative point as to what you have to do with what's ailing you or what's troubling you or some physical things. Look, this is no bullshit. That beginning stuff helps a lot of people. But it does this. You do the communication course.

And you think, man, this is great. This, you know, I can communicate better. I know the anatomy of the communication. You know, if it goes awry, I know how to fix it. I can handle life better. I can get along better with my wife, other people. Man, this is good stuff. In other words, you're starting to gain confidence in it, right?

Another thing comes along. Maybe you receive beginning counseling or auditing. And you come to realize some things as to how come you felt bad about a certain person or why you feel bad about yourself. And I think this is good. You're gaining confidence. You're gaining confidence. Now something comes along and they present a fact to you that doesn't quite seem to make sense.

And you think, well, this doesn't seem to make sense, but I'll accept it because everything so far has been good. The hook is in. You're saying, you're saying that. Because there's, there's, because there's things that work, You knew they worked. You applied them. They helped you in life. Now you're presented with something that was a little bit off the mark,

but you think, well, it doesn't quite make sense, but I'll accept it. Because everything so far has been true. Because now you're a believer. And at that point, you're susceptible to believing everything and anything they tell you. Because you've made up your mind in the first part that it's all good. So it must be all good all the way. Maybe I don't understand it exactly. maybe there's something about it that I'll learn later on, but I'll accept it.

So you're saying all of the self-help stuff in the beginning, the stuff that should be better at communicating, you know, better at using your mind to overcome your situations, better, you know, it helps you to make more, better decisions in your life. That is sort of like the peanut butter that helps you swallow the pill of what comes later. Yes, and I'll tell you this. If you just, well, you shouldn't say all the things that you get. but I'd say most of them. I can't think of what wouldn't be good, but I'd rather give it a percentage rather than saying 100%. But the early part is good.

That's in my experience. And I can tell you just from my experience because it helped me. But that's to my detriment because then that then hooked me in the thing and everything was going to be good. You see what I'm saying? Now, if I would have quit at that point, that would have been a favorable thing but I didn't

and I was in it for 42 years my friend okay that's a long time you goddamn right you wouldn't want to hold your breath through that long all right how old are you 84 84 so that was almost half of your life

yeah and people say well don't you really wish this and wish that and regret it let me tell you something I don't spend time regretting things or going over, oh, woe is me, because the end result of regretting something is having regretted something. There is nothing to it.

You're living today. You did what happened yesterday. Create a better tomorrow for yourself and do what you can to help other people not to get involved. And that's how I try to live my life. I have a four-word philosophy, Danny. And as a matter of fact, I told this to Mike when I was writing my book, Mike Rinder. and it's simply this.

Help somebody, help something. And I try to live by that. I don't always do it, but I try to. And I can tell you, I feel better helping something or helping somebody than I do being helped. That's just me personally. So that kind of puts me in a frame of mind where I'm not always sitting around, you know, drinking a martini and saying, Jesus Christ, look, always me. Come on, man, it's gone.

There's nothing you can do to change yesterday. But you can change tomorrow and you can help a lot of people if you do something effective. These are one of the things like being interviewed by me. I hope a lot of people who see this. Some of them could be involved in Scientology. And I hope they walk away. That I would be pleased with. But now, we're getting back to David.

Okay. So, so David gets an auditing, goes through an auditing session. And he comes out of that auditing session and he says, dad, I'm fixed. Yeah. And at that point, I said, no, say it again, he never had another severe attack. He had attacks that were mild. You see what I'm saying? And that was a big deal. He was able to control them. Well, yeah, for whatever reason, because I guess in that session, in that auditing session, he realized that, hey, wait a minute, I have had something to do with this while, just, you know, maybe ride the wave a little bit. And I don't know what he did, but whatever he did after that, he never had one where he was dying to get air. And I had to, you know, take him in a cold shower, have him lift weights.

Okay. Okay. But that was the point where I decided I get my whole family in. And I did. I took them all down to a mission in Sherry Hill, New Jersey and put them on beginning courses and on some auditing and stuff. And I ended up going to England two times each for a year and a half to, and I took my whole family over. to put them on the bridge. They didn't go to school the first time.

All they did was did Scientology courses. And as a matter of fact, that's why Mike was in England when I met him when he was 15 years old. His dad took his family and his children over there to do that. So my children and his dad, we are of similar mind as far as Scientology was concerned. We thought it was the greatest thing ever.

Listen, we thought if the Scientology auditing, or technology rather, Could it be applied. It would help every man, woman, and child on this planet. That's the mindset of a Kool-Aid drinking Scientologist. And I'll tell you, once you get in that mindset, you defend, you defend that. You justify why you feel that way. You become arrogant.

You think you're smarter than the Wog, which is a person who doesn't know Scientology, who's not in. It really is. It really is a prison of the mind. I love the title of that book, The Prison of Belief. It's so accurate. Because you don't need bars. You don't need bars to be in this prison.

No, you don't. Can I make a plug for something? My website? Yes, please. It's called the real Ron Miscavage.com. And I'll tell you why I'm plugging it. Well, first of all, I'm plugging it because I want a lot of your listeners, hopefully, to come over.

and watch it because I have over 90 interviews of people who have been abused by the Church of Scientology. They can watch these, and you'll see similarities in all of these of the people who lost their family, who were disconnected from their children, lost their friends. Maybe some of them went bankrupt, lost their house. So it's worth watching, and it's also worth watching, because there was a situation that happened when I had two private investigators following me. And that entire interrogation with the West Dallas Police is on that website. You can listen to that entire investigatory questioning that the West Dallas police gave the private investigators who were following me.

Okay. So let's get back to the story where you basically get your whole family into it into Scientology. And what happens next? Well, we go to England and we're, on course and then I came back to the state show I went back over. Did you sail on the ship with El Ron Hubbard? Never. No. No, as a matter of fact, I never met him face to face.

The closest I came to meeting him was after I finished. When we were in England the second time, I got a recording deal with Pallador records to do an album, which I did do. And a writer's contract with Chapel's Publishing for my music. And I sent him a copy of the album. And he heard it and he said to one of his age, see if you can get this guy for me. They never followed through. And thank God they didn't because I may have ended up joining them on the ship.

And that would have been a dire blunder on my part. I got to tell you, man. Mike Rinder said he was on the ship. I know he was. Yeah. It was quite an adventure. He had there too. What a crazy thing.

So they were all like just like slaves for Hubbard on that ship. He was just captaining the ship and he wore this crazy captain's outfit. Yeah. Smoked a pipe and sailed the seven seas with his slave workers. His messengers. There were cometers messengers. That's what they called him. Oh, that's what he called himself, the Commodore?

Commodore, right. And the young people he had working for him, who would, he would give orders to give the people on the ship and they'd go run and give the order to the person and come back and tell El Ron Humboldt what the guy said. were called comoders messengers and did your son david end up on this ship no no okay no so now getting back to the story about england so then we came back and now we're living in uh little north of philadelphia in a town called brumall and david is in high school now i come home from work one day and he's laying in his room with his head in his hands like that

laying that back. I say, Dave, what's up, man? And he says, Dad, he says, I don't want to go to school anymore. I said, what do you mean? He says, listen, I'm in school and none of the kids want to learn anything. They all smoke dope. They're wise-ass to the teacher. They don't show her any respect. He said, it's terrible. I said, what do you want to do?

He says, I want to go and help El Ron Hubbard. He's kidding. He says, no. He says, I want to join the C organization. Now, at that moment, I thought to myself, I was 17 years old when I met the Marine recruiter. And I really wanted to become Marine. A Marine. That actually changed my life for the better. He's going to be 16 years old soon. I got to give him a shot at what he wants to do because maybe he's right.

Maybe this is what he's destined to do in life. And I said to him, David, I'll tell you what, I'll help you. man. I'll do whatever I can to help you do that. So I gave him a bunch of money, he bought him some clothes, and on the day after his 16th birthday, I bought a ticket for him to go to Clearwater, Florida, to join the Sea Organization, and I saw him off on an airplane. And he went, joined the Seahorg down there, and I think within seven months he was working with Elron Hubbard. By the way, from where I am sitting right now, I could hit a golf ball and hit that flag building.

That's how close I am. I'm right in the heart of it. I believe you. And that's where it all started, right? That's where, that's where, give me the background on, on that building. Like, how did that? Well, on that building, here's what happened. That ship that Elron Hubbard was flying around the Mediterranean.

Sorry, right. Yeah, here, let me, let me get a drink. Yeah, yeah. It used to be a hotel. It used to be called the Jack Tar Hotel. Right. Now here, the ship that El Ron Hubbard was on in the Mediterranean was called the Apollo. They were running out of ports to go to because apparently the CIA was onto them.

And if you're out in open sea, you can't just snatch anybody. once they landed at a port, if you have reason and warrants, you can grab them then. So they decided to sail across the Atlantic and go to the states and go on land. So they sailed across and they bought that hotel. I think it was called under the name of United Churches of something. It was an under-the-table deal for cash. They didn't say it's Scientology bought it, but Scientology buying it. but they bought that hotel thing on the pretext that they were a church organization and that that's how they got started there and that at that hotel it was a lie a complete lie that they told in order to get it so he was originally sailing the apollo in international waters to avoid indictments or in void yeah yeah because he already owed tons of money to the IRS I don't know if that was it other than maybe but yeah probably

probably because they had no tax exemption. And he was making tons of money. I mean, he would get like suitcases full of cash delivered to the ship to him. And that would go into bank accounts in Swiss bank accounts. And yeah, it was an operation. So they're after him for many things,

which I can't specifically tell you. I'm not privy to that. So I'm not going to make up something. But he was on the lamb. Okay. So how. So once David flew out to Clearwater and started working at that, that main headquarters over there.

Obviously, he started climbing the ladder, right? Yes, yes. And what happened? Well, at that point, Elron Hubbard was in California and in a place close to Palm Springs, Le Quinta, I think it was called. And it was a date for him. And they used to shoot movies there. They made these movies because El Ron.

Ron Hubbard felt that people in society were going illiterate. The education was not that good. They didn't understand the written word as good as they could. So he decided to shoot movies to make points about applying his technical points to other people to make them better. If you see a movie on how to do something, it's monkey see monkey do. You follow me? Yeah. So he was shooting movies.

And David ended up there and he ended up being the cameraman. he would shoot the actual movies with Elron Hubbard on the set. Wow. Oh, yeah. And that happened in a short time. He did start climbing the ladder. There's no two ways about it. And just got himself into a more powerful position where he was what's called the action chief.

And that would be a person who would send out C organization members on missions. Like if you would go to an organization that was not doing well, You'd go there with mission orders and you'd implement those. You'd usually have two people at least. And he would run these people. He'd give them the orders. They'd send back reports and based on what he got back, he'd give them further orders to do, which was quite a position of power.

You see this as the longer he's in now, he's achieving more power. Is he making good money doing this? No. I mean, as a Seorg member, Like when I joined in 1985, we were getting $30 a week. $30 a week. $30 a week, mind you, you got your room and board. You got uniforms, you got fed.

But yeah, that's what we got. And then some years later, it was bumped up to $50 a week. But many weeks, you didn't get paid. If the organization didn't make enough money or somebody fucked up within the organization, everybody would pay. There was a girl who went to, I'll give you an example of that precisely. She goes to an event up in Northern California, and she bought, she didn't buy, she rented these fake bushes to put up like a wall around where the event was going on. That turned out to be bad publicity.

So she was made responsible for paying what it cost to rent those bushes, which was thousands of dollars. What happened? Everybody in the organization didn't get paid that week. because of her screw up. Jesus. I know. It's insane. And I'm gracious when I say that it's insane.

You know, it's really like lunatics on steroids. Come on, man. Yeah. And everybody pays for the one person screwing up. It would be like in society. If somebody stole a car, everybody in town had a chip in and paid for the car that the thief stole.

The thief wouldn't go to jail. Everybody was punished. don't try to make sense out of it because it doesn't make sense. Right. If you know it's nuts, you understand what I just said to you. So now, what is it? Sorry, what does it mean? What is the C-org and how do you join it?

Okay. The C-organization is actually, you could call it a fraternity or a brotherhood. Let me give you a comparable to the C-organization, okay? So we can look at it on something that you do understand something about. Let's say the Catholic Church, okay? The Catholic Church has parishioners. That's people who go to Mass and they receive sacraments and whatever they do. Okay.

That would be the same thing as Scientology public who goes into an organization to receive auditing or do courses. Okay. Then they have priests that run those parishes, okay? In Scientology, you would have staff members running those lower grade churches. That would be staff members. That would be comparable to the priests. Okay. But then within that framework, let's say in Los Angeles, you would have L.A.

Day, Los Angeles Day organization. That would be like a priest run by priests, not necessarily C organization, but contract. staff members for two and a half or five years. Okay. You with me on this so far? Yes. Okay. Now, while you're there, you would have an advanced organization, which would be someplace

where you'd go to advanced Scientology, spiritual technology. That would be run by C organizations, which are people who sign a billion-year contract to keep on forwarding Elron Hubbard's works across the universe. Okay? Yeah. That's the C organization. And that would be comparable to, let's say, you would have a, let's say in Pennsylvania, there's the head, I think it's, I don't know the word now.

I can't think of it. where you have bishops. These guys would be like bishops running churches. But now the people at the main headquarters up in Hemet, California, they would be like the cardinals in Rome. Okay, that makes sense. Do you see that how it works? In other words, people who are public prisoners in a church,

that would be public Scientologists. lower level things that would be run by priests which would be comparable to the staff members at those lower and going up until you gain more power and the top end would be like the cardinals in rome and david would be liken to the pope now do all these people sign these billion year contracts every c organization member does a staff member at a lower level mission or excuse me organization signs a two and a half or a five-year contract. In addition to the billion year contract? No, they don't sign the billion years.

Staff members would be like the priest in the local church. It's only two and a half or five years. Okay. But that's also a place that's considered a feeding ground for Seorg recruiters to grab people from there to get them to sign the billion year contract. Does anybody challenge it? Like, does anyone like, oh, let me get my lawyer to review this? Never.

Never. No, it's. It's all done under the rest. I mean, people come over and spend hours. Listen, then I used to recruit people for the Seahorg. I used to recruit people to do this. I used to do videos telling people about the gains that they would get from listening to Elron Herbert's lectures.

I did all those things. I'm not talking about something I read in a fucking book. I did it. I understand the state of mind. I understand you said earlier in talking with me, you don't need bars. You just have to have a prison of your own mind. And you do this. And you do it almost on a daily basis because if you're a Scientologist, you're supposed to study two and a half hours a day, five days a week.

And basically what you're going into is just going in and telling yourself these things and you're indoctrinating yourself. you are building your own prison in your own mind on your time and if you're a public Scientologist you're paying for it yeah it's the cleverest scam that could ever possibly be run how many people at this time when David first got in and and we started climbing the ladder how many people were in Scientology how many like active members were there well I'm going to guess at it but I'm guessing based on people who who were on the lines, when I say the lines, in a position to know better.

In the 90s, there was considered to be about 100,000 active Scientologists in the world, which is quite a bit. These days, with the advent of the internet, and now look at the toothpaste is out of the tube, you can't get it back in. Come on. The cat has left a fucking bag, okay?

And you just can't say, we were only joking, come on. It's estimated that maybe it's on the lower side of 20,000. That's going from 100,000 down to less than 20,000. A big drop off. Well, it's a big drop off, but it's deservedly so. I mean, you are... How do they still make money with only 20,000 people?

I mean, they got a lot of overhead. Do they have a lot of overhead? Well, let's put it this way. If you're at church, and they're considered to be... be a church, probably whoever gave them that exemption should be, should want a Monty

Python show and tell the story. I mean, it would qualify as a good show, all right? If you have a church, you just can't keep on gathering money and making more and more money. You have to show that the money you're taking in has some benefit to your parishioners, okay? So now,

how do you handle this? Well, one of the bright ideas that they come up with was this. they would purchase new buildings and renovate them to the inch of their lives with marble floors and beautiful appointments and everything and that would be to the benefit of people coming in to do services they would gain that money maybe you know some of these cost 10 20 million dollars they could put that money into it now they have a real estate holding and they can say that we're benefiting the parishioners so that's like laundering all this money through real estate.

Good way to put it. Matter of fact, I tell you, that is the brightest answer I've ever had on this, and I've done a lot of these things. That's great, then you're laundering money through real estate. Yeah,

that's what it is. Well, you're exactly, I'm not going to add anything to it, but I will add this, though. You know what's in those places? Absolutely nothing, right? Air.

Right. They're air storage places. Yeah. In downtown Clearwater, all that real estate they own. They have this, they have this like street level like, like storefront real estate in downtown clearwater that they keep completely empty. And it keeps, it keeps that whole town dead. Well. And the businesses that are open that are successful, successfully running, their own, the landlords are Scientologists.

So the owners are Scientologists. Yeah. You got it. But that's, that's what they do. And that's, uh, so no, how do they pay? in, how do they do all these things? They have what's called whales. I think that's a term that originated in Las Vegas.

A whale would be a high spender. He'd be the guy that you'd meet at the airport in limo. You'd drive him and you'd comp in his room and the room had everything you needed and, you know, free food, everything because all you wanted this guy to do was go down and play blackjack or roulette or whatever he played or,

poker and lose millions of dollars. As a matter of fact, there was a guy who owned the Philadelphia Eagles. And, you know, I'm not putting them down now because, you know, some people have gambling as a drug. His name was Leonard Toes. He built up so much debt to Las Vegas. He had to sell the Philadelphia Eagles football team to get out of debt. Really?

Yeah, that's how, I can't think of the guy's name who bought it. Yeah, the guy who bought it was. a real estate developer, and he got it for a good price. He sold the Eagles to pay off his gambling debts in Vegas. Oh my God. So he would be considered to be a whale. Okay, so you're saying there's few people in Scientology that just donate tons of cash? Not few. There's a lot of them.

Okay. And when I say, like, Dougan, Bob Dougan, I think he came up with some way to cure or handle a certain type of cancer. he made billions of dollars on it. And I think he ended up giving a church wild guess. I could be off maybe something like $30 million over the period of time. Does he live in Clearwater? I don't know where he lives. There's a, there's a bunch of, there's like this really rich neighborhood in Clearwater called Bel Air.

Yeah. Like Bell Air of Florida. And I had a friend who bought a house on the water, like a really nice, like $6 million house on the intercoastal. And the whole bottom floor of the house was like a recording studio that was renovated into a like an e-meter room, an auditing room. When he bought it, it was just like this crazy looking dungeon that they used to do auditing. So, yeah, all the people with money down here are most people with money. Yeah, that's what they do. And they give, you know, millions, millions of dollars to the church.

They have an event every year in St. Hill, England, which is in, Sussex County and they have a tent. They rig up a tent and that tent is rigged up like a big banquet room. If you were to see the field before they started and look at this, it would almost look like a miracle. And they have two events there. They have the patrons ball, which is a ball where all the patrons come and they dance and they just have a good time and they receive rewards. and then they have another time where they give out, they have a local thing for the local people in East Grinstead.

But that's where the people come up on the stage, people who have given $50,000 up to $10,000, $20 million. They receive a big trophy and a certificate, and that's it. That money, there's a good business. Look, here you take a piece of paper, write something on it, get $10 million for that.

He's a good business, low overhead, right? Yeah. He gets a certificate that he's a diamond maximus, protamus, colosumus, gave $10 million. Here's your paper. A big, big certificate, and they take pictures of you, and you smile, and that's the end of it. That's how they pay the bills. At what point did you start to see your son sort of disappear or sort of slip away from you? like at what point did you see him start to go down the dark road well i can tell you this um

when i joined the series organization we were still on very friendly terms of each other i can tell you listen i i must say this and i say it on every program as a child we had a wonderful time together we had a great time together he had a great sense of humor it was a tough little kid, he was smart, he turned from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. And as far as I'm concerned, yeah, maybe he had that built into his DNA to do that. Although there are times when I wonder, maybe a lot of us have things that are there if they're nurtured and they'll come out, but we don't do them. But in his case, he went from Dr. Jakel and Mr. Hyde with the acquisition of power. Do you follow me?

There was an English philosopher. Well, he wasn't a philosopher. He was a member of parliament. He lived in the 1800s. His name was Lord Acton. He is the one who said, and this is an exact quote, power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely, which I'm sure you've heard. Yeah. Okay.

And I think that's what happened to David. Now, let me tell you when this happened. and then I'll backtrack to when you start slipping away. While he was in the C organization, while he was higher up in the ranks, we spoke about a little earlier, he did have a severe asthmatic attack. And it had to take him to the hospital to the emergency room to get it handled. So the next day when they went to pick him up, the guy told me, David came out and he said, listen, I had an amazing realization. and here's what it is. He had this when he was in there,

getting treatment for the asthma. His realization was this. Power is not granted. It is assumed. And that's what he did. He assumed the leadership of Scientology when El Ron Hubbard died, got people out of the way

who protested him doing it, put his own people in who would back him up, and he eventually took him, over the church that way. He just assumed that position. He was not picked by Elron Hubbard. He was not appointed.

Elron never didn't appoint anybody to succeed him. When he died, he died. That was the end of it. He didn't have a will or anything? You left the will for the money. But as far as, you know, like if you're in a position of power, like if you were a king and you wanted a certain son to be the next king, you'd say, okay, I want this son to be my king.

That would be your request, you know? Yeah, you would think a guy like him would have some sort of a plan after he dies and who would run the run Scientology. Well, you would think that, but it didn't happen, all right? And I agree with you. But now, let's get back to the question. When did I see him slipping away, right? Right. Well, when I joined the C organization, first of all, you're living in quarters that, with other people, that, you know, cockroaches and really bad quarters.

what he did he got me a room in this building where it was a very nice room and he had it appointed nicely so when I was through with my daily activities in the beginning part the Estates Project Force which is like boot camp for the Seorg while I was doing that I had a very nice room to stay in and we got along great

and now I go to Golden Air Productions and since I'm a musician I go right into the music department and the studio is a fabulous looking place. As a matter of fact, I tell you, when I first got in, the first thing I did was I did an album with Edgar Winner. Does that name Ring Abell to you or no?

Yeah, I've heard the name. Edgar Wimner, he was a rock and roll star of the 70s, okay? The song, Frankenstein, you remember? Dada, da, da, ba, pa, da, da, da, da, pa, pa, do you remember that? Oh, yeah. You might remember that. That was his, and he was a brilliant, brilliant musician. I did an album with him.

That's the first thing I did. I mean, you talk about like a pig and shit. I was really happy, you know? I mean, I worked hard, but I'm working with him. I'm playing on the album. I did all the trumpet work on it. I did solos on it. And one day, I come out of the studio, and David was about 30 yards to my left.

And I saw him, and he's walking with his coterie. there's maybe three or four people with them. And I says, hey, Dave. And he turned and he looked at me. And he gave me a look that I thought, I better not do that again. And that little bit of a hint there was a harbinger of things to come. Okay? I realized that at that point, I was a staff member at Golden Air Productions.

He didn't call me dad. He called me Ron whenever he addressed me. on my birthday or Christmas, if he sent me a gift, he'd write Dear Dad and who always gave me very nice presents and treated me well on those days. But on an everyday basis, I was another staff member at Golden Air Productions, and he was the chairman of the board. When his power hit high gear or supersonic speed, it was the night that he announced that we had tax exemption from the Internal Revenue Service, and that was done at the time. the sports arena in L.A. And that was, he shot up in the ranks.

At that point, he became a powerful individual in the church. Because at that point, everybody looked up to him as the Savior. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. Anything he did, any stuff

he did was considered okay. I mean, there are people in politics that way. And I'm not really going to get into politics. But if they have backers who backed them up for years, that politician could do anything. And they'd say, well, that's okay. That's so-and-so. You know, it's all right.

You see what I'm saying? They become opinion leaders for their followers. Absolutely. You become an opinion leader, and your opinion counts more than what the person thinks about you, because his opinion could come to you and you say, well, I'm wrong for thinking at. It's a delicious thing, power, but boy, I'll tell you, it, it poisons a person. Now, what were at this point, when did the tax exemption happen?

I need 93. And 93. And what were you doing? Like, what was your day-to-day task? Like, where were you living? What were you doing? How are you getting paid? I was in the C organization for 26 and a half years, all right?

Yeah. I lived every bit of that at the Golden Air Production space in Hammond, California. Okay, okay. That's where I stayed all the time. I worked in a music department. And this is when you're getting paid 30 bucks a week? to begin with and I think maybe by then we may have been getting $50 a week but as I said earlier sometimes we wouldn't get that I remember one time we didn't get paid for months and then the

commanding officer said well it's like a forced savings account you get it at the end we never got it we just never got it and you just got screwed out of the money and like what was your relationship so your father's son relationship would you say that that was completely gone by that point? Not completely gone, but it was only on occasion that we had that. On a day-to-day basis, if he came in to see me and I worked with a guy

of the name of Peter Schlese, it was all business. It was not father and son at all, not even a little bit. But like, there would be times maybe when we were on a break from lunch and he'd come over because he sometimes would be

in an office near where we had lunch, he would come over to where I was and just sit down and shoot the breeze with me and that was father and son type of thing with me and Becky my wife but it'd become fewer and fewer and I'll tell you truthfully what I longed for anything more than

presence or anything was that he would communicate with me more sometimes he'd come to the base and be there for two or three weeks he wouldn't even call me yeah you know just to say hello dad and that was that was how it was yeah that's sad man yeah it is and and look i'll tell you what else is sad look my daughter denise my daughter lorry are they still in scientology absolutely their children they're all in their children have children i've never met those grandchildren

the only ones i'm in communication with is my son ronnie who by the way had celebrated a birthday today I played happy birthday for him on the piano I have in this room. Today's his birthday? My son, Ronnie. And is he in Scientology? No, he left in the 90s. Okay. Yeah, and I'm in communication with him and Jenna, his daughter, which is my granddaughter, and her children.

So that's my family right now. And the two cats, I guess you could call it in my family because my big cat, Frank, I have a chair at the table. he eats at the table with us. And we were talking about this, when we were talking about the interview, I have a feral cat named Sammy. Oh, yeah. And she has a bedroom dedicated to her. So once she gets over her fear of me, she'll probably sit at the table and eat with us, you know. Yeah.

That's awesome. You should have set her up on the table with you for this podcast. Well, she's not in a mood to, she doesn't know if she can trust me yet, okay. Yeah, she's keeping her distance. Yeah, well, she knows she's going to get great food because I give her the best food money can buy. And she looks forward to that. But she enjoys my singing more than me touching her, you know. Anyway, getting back to this.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So at what point did this reach a level, a point of no return? Like, where you, there was a tipping point, right, where you realized, like, you got to get the hell out of here. This is, it's, it's beyond our control. Yeah, well, my wife is the eternal optimist, okay? Things were getting bad, like not getting paid. Well, here, you live at Golden Air Productions. You're in a compound.

There's fence around it with barbed wire pointing out and pointing in. You can't get in your car and go to Walmart and pick up some underwear or shaving cream or a razor or something, you know. you just can't leave the base willy-nilly. You're sequestered there. You can't make a telephone call without somebody peeing on the extension

listening to what you're saying and then writing a report on what you talked about. You can't receive mail without it being opened by the security guards and you can't send out a mail in a sealed envelope.

You can write a letter. You have to leave it open. Security guards will get it. They'll read it if there's anything in there that they don't want to be they'll send it back and tell you how to correct it and send it out so you're living a completely controlled life my whole life prior up to that i had been basically self-employed so i was like a free

agent i could come and go as i pleased you said i'm saying but i figured you could leave the compound and go wherever you wanted you say what now you could leave the compound and go wherever you wanted you mean in life itself prior to the seorg no when you were in the seorg i couldn't leave the compound ever. No, I could not just walk off the base. Okay. Even if I had to go to see a doctor, I would have to have somebody be with me,

and we'd have to write in what's called CSW, a completed staff work, which presented what you wanted to do, how you'd be doing it, and then say at the bottom line, this is okay. And if that was okay, then you would present that CSW to the security guards at the gate where there was iron gates that opened electronically or closed

and they would either let you go or say no you can't go and you'd have to have somebody to go with you that's how it was in other words I was trapped right okay in some simple words now this started wearing on me but when you're first in and like I did the album with Edgar winner and I did other things that were good and I was working in the studio and really nice environment, long hours, long hours and just a lot of duress, I figure I'm doing it for the good of all mankind. That is a very forgiving attitude that I had as for being treated the way I was being treated.

Because I figured if we get this technology out, it's going to help everybody who lives on this planet. But as the years went by and it's just become more draconian, I thought, there's something wrong with this. There's something wrong with what's going on now. And my life is becoming untenable. I can't really live this way. And I would say this time my wife, and she would say, Ron, it's going to get better. I know it's going to get better. And I'd say, Becky, listen, if there's a boulder running down the mountain, do you think that boulder is going to stop and return and roll up the mountain?

If things are going bad in something in an organization or in life and nothing is done to change it, things will continue to go bad or even get worse. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. Now. Now, do, let's talk about quickly how much conversation goes on with the Corg members, the people that you were interacting with. How much conversation is there about the science fictiony shit, like Zeno and his galactic confederacy and the volcano? Okay, I'm going to give you a nonverbal answer. What does that look like between my thumb and my first finger?

That looks like a zero. You got it. Nothing. If you're caught saying anything about that, if you're at that level, and don't forget, that level is. part of the operating Thaeton, meaning a Thaeton is a spirit. Operating means you're operating as that spiritual being. That's O.T. 3. That's confidential.

If two people are on it, even the person who is on it and you are on it, you still don't talk about that to anybody ever. And that's in like a rule book that Hubbard wrote? Absolutely. Absolutely. You don't discuss that with anybody. I mean Hubbard also Hubbard also wrote more science fiction than anybody in the history of the planet, right?

I mean, these people know this? Of course they do. Of course they do. They don't get suspicious. Wait a minute. I don't know if everybody in this year knows that. But most people do, all right?

Yeah, this dude wrote maniacal stories, just complete fiction stories, you know, more of them than anybody. And how could you not tie the two ideas together? Like, uh, maybe this Zeno shit and this hydrogen bomb that happened on this volcano and aliens, shuttling humans back and forth between other galaxies is, maybe this is all horseshit. That's true.

But I'll tell you this. When I got on that level, and I did that level, by the way. Which level? O-T-3, what you're talking about. When I first did it, I thought, okay, here's the technology. This seems really odd, but I'm going to try it. But I thought to myself, which I didn't tell us to anybody until after I left. I thought to myself, look, here's a problem.

This is going on on 76 nearby planets. the problem in this sector of the universe is overpopulation, an average of 150 billion people per planet. And Zeno is this galactic warlord who now is going to, quote, handle this. There's a whole story that goes behind it. That's not on the level when you get on it, but there was a book written on called Revolt in the Stars,

and he stole the money from tax people electronically. But think about this. There's 150 billion people per planet. If you want to cut down the population, what do you want to cut it down to? A hundred billion? That means you'd have to take 50 billion people, not in their bodies, but even as spiritual beings, packed up in ice, in boxes, in a spaceship that looked like a propeller plane back in the Second World War. How many fucking...

pictures of it? Yeah, but here's the thing. Logistically, it's impossible. How long would it take you to get 50 billion times 76 packed up spiritual beings to another planet? I guess it's so fucking out there that you don't even use. But I thought that, though, and it was the one thing. It was the one thing I thought, this can't be true, but I have to do this level. I can't say, hey, wait.

a minute. How the fuck did he do this? I got it. You're too. You're overwhelmed with the drive and desire to succeed and reach the next level. Not only that. You're overwhelmed with the fact that you're going to get your fucking brains beating if you bring up something like that.

I don't mean physically. Nobody would beat you in a head like that with the club. But I'm talking about you'd have to go to security. You'd be security check. you'd be sequestered and you'd spend the life being interrogated as what evil purposes do you have against Elron Hubbard, what evil purposes do you have against David Muscavich, all these questions and you'd be on physical labor. If you'd be off that.

If you questioned anything, that's what would happen. If you, like, I think if you question something of that magnitude, your horseshit. Your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, you're doing that level again. And, uh, there's still. within you, that possibility may be something here is going to work and give me something that I would really like to have what you'd be to be a more effective, powerful individual. I could help more people. The help button is a big deal. It's a big deal with people in Scientology. A lot of them, when you first get in, you want to help yourself, but then it comes that you want to help

your fellow man. And that's a driving force. I've got to tell you, Danny. You see what I'm saying? you're tracking with me. Yeah, it's a, this is a, this is a real trap that you got yourself in and, you know, you go along with it.

What if you're like, look, I'm over this bullshit, okay, be like, look, I've been here for 30 years. I've risen through these ranks.

I've donated all this money. You guys pay me 50 bucks a week. I'm done. I'm going to go do something else. Like, this is, this is bullshit. I'm not going to stay here anymore.

It didn't happen that way with me. But you want to hear how it happened? Yeah. Or you have, you have something else you want to ask before we get into that. No, no, no, no. Yeah, I want to hear how you ended up leaving. Okay.

Well, here's what happened. As I said, I used to say to Becky, look, this is terrible. There's some way we've got to get out of here. Now, I was really chancing something because in the C organization, they have what's called knowledge reports, where if you tell this to your wife, she is duty bound to write a knowledge report on you saying these things. And this happens to many people where the husband will say something to the wife.

She'll write a knowledge report and turn it into the ethics section. And now you have to go through interrogation and everything. I try to turn everybody into a snitch. It's exactly what it is. Tony Ortega calls it a snitch culture. And it's exactly what it is. It's like in Germany, Hitler's youth, the little kids used to write, up their parents and

Gestapo would come over and a kid, I'm sure regretted at that point, but the kids were indoctrinated into doing that in Nazi Germany. So now, this is going on. And it's becoming more and more

oppressive and more and more rules are being done and to the point where I don't know how to fuck I'm going to live this way. Now, David gave me a Kindle as a present. I think it was a Christmas present.

As a matter of fact, it was a Christmas present. And you're familiar with the Kindle. We went over that, right? Yeah. A Kindle, and I'm sure the people watching this knows, but it's an electronic form to store books and you can read them. Yeah, yeah. Was your Kendall loaded up with Elron Hubbard books?

My Kindle was loaded up with all of Elron Hubbard science fiction books. Whoa. Okay. And I don't know how he did it, but he got somebody to put it on there, which was great, because you can't do it. I don't think it's available on Amazon, so he had to get it put on there. So anyway, the security guards are making a concentrated effort to get this Kindle away from me, and I don't know why. And finally, I said to him, listen, I'm not giving you this Kindle. David gave me this.

Now, that backed them off totally because David's the chairman of the board. He's like the Supreme Commander there. There's nobody above him. So they just backed off. But I couldn't figure out why did they want to get this Kindle? I mean, they wouldn't take it from me and use it for their own purposes. That would be they must have cut their own throat if they did that. But anyway, one night I get home and I would get off a little bit early because I had an incident that happened to me where I had heart palpitations for,

like 12 hours straight. And I went into see a doctor and he put a Holter monitor on me, which is a thing that detects your heartbeat. And at night, sometimes my heartbeat would go up to 138. So the doctor said, look, you got to drink less coffee. Don't smoke as much or quit smoking. And I got off an hour early to get extra rest. It's necessary to tell you that because I'm home laying in bed and I'm reading my Kindle.

And Becky's not there. and everybody else is still working that extra hour. So on a Kindle, and I had the older one, which had a mechanical toggle switch, that if you press to the right, the cursor would go to the right. If you press to the left, you go to the left, press up and go up and press down, it would get down. Now, one of the things that was helpful in was this. If you ran across a word that you didn't understand the meaning of,

you could select that word, press the toggle switch to the right, and it would take it to a dictionary and give you the definition. I'm reading, I run across this word, I select it, I press the toggle switch to the right, and for no reason at all, I kept it pressed to the right, it went dictionary, internet. I was on the internet with no filter. A complete mistake.

because on that base, if you went on the internet, there are filters on them. You couldn't look at anything about miscavage, about Scientology. You could buy things that way. You could buy, you know,

clothing or whatever. Now I'm on the internet with no filter. And I thought, whoa, you know, I'm out of the pen. The dog's out of the pen. I'm going to go and see what else.

is up. So what'd you find? Well, here's what I found. And it was the key thing that probably was the tipping point, as you just mentioned, that expression I do like. Because it was the tipping point. There was a person on that base named Annie Tidman. Annie Tidman was one of those comiters messengers that I talked about earlier. And she was with Elaron Hubbard for all these years. and as a matter of fact, she and her husband were the two people that were with him when he was traveling around in his trailer, house trailer. So she was taken care of him. So she was a very loyal messenger of his.

Annie Tidman was on that base. She had to stay there. She couldn't leave the base because she was considered to be a security risk. She developed cancer. So they sent her to Los Angeles to get treatment. for the cancer and they sent a handler down with her, which would also audit her, counsel her on one of the highest levels in Scientology. I looked up her name and up till this point I would ask Martin, who was our medical liaison

officer, how is Annie doing? Because she was a good friend of mine. Oh, she's doing great, Ronnie. Yeah, she's doing coming along really good. Okay, good. On the internet, she died six months ago. I couldn't believe it. almost as a fluke the next day two girls are standing outside our birthing compound and they said to me ronnie it's annie's birthday we're taking up a collection for gifts or her do you want to contribute anything and i looked at them and i thought i thought to myself i didn't say anything i thought they're either part of the scam or they don't know anything about it and they're being duped like i was duped and i turned them down but that was the point that i knew i had to check the further things that were

were said about Scientology, and I started looking at the internet, started looking at Elron Hubbard's war record, which he was not a war hero at all, a lot of other things that he said and did. And it was that point that when Becky came home, I said, Becky, we're getting out of here. And then we started working on our plan to escape. Our plan to escape took us six months. I didn't want to leave everything behind. And the way we worked it out is this. I was 76 years old when we left, by the way,

and it was on March 25th, 2012. On my 75th birthday, my wife, Becky, got my daughters, Denise and Lori, to send me 75 gifts. Some of the gifts were like a pen, or it was some little trinket, another was bigger, but I had these boxes of gifts. So the security saw this. They saw that I got 75.

gifts. So then we started sending out particles that we had to her mother who was going to have a birthday. And they allowed it to go because they thought, well, I got 75 gifts. I'm probably going to give her about 70-some gifts. You follow me? Mark. So that's how we were able to get a lot of our belongings off to otherwise. I couldn't put everything in a car. So then it's coming down to the day that we're going to leave, and I get up at 7 o'clock that morning. We have breakfast at 9 o'clock. It's a Sunday. And prior to that, what I had done on every Sunday morning for months is I would get in my car

and I would drive across from the southern part of the base through the gate to the northern part, come back and go into the studio, which in the studio there was a refrigerator. and I always had maybe Italian salami, some provolone cheese, some brie, all kinds of fancy little things that I would store there. And I'd come through the main gate and I'd give these treats to the security guards every Sunday morning. So basically what I was doing was feeding the watchdogs and getting them used to the fact that I'd be going to the north side of the property every Sunday morning to get a treat before breakfast. So now we're coming to the day that we're going to get out of there. And by the way, the night before, I have a bag full of shoes in a mesh bag, and I'm putting it in my car.

And one of the security guards drove by, looked at me doing this, didn't even mention it, and I'll tell you why. My cover was this. I was 76 years old. Nobody thought I would ever leave. And I was the father of the chairman of the board. And those two things were the best cover I had for our plan being executed and going into effect. Now, comes the day we're leaving, we go out to the car.

I had a little notebook, which I still have, and I marked in there all the things were taken and the things were leaving. And there are two gates on the lower side of the property. The main gate where the security guards are is like a booth in it where the security is, and they have infrared things where they can look all over the base and just all kinds of electronic equipment to see if anybody's trying to get out or get in. And there's another gate called the West Gate,

which is west of that, about 150 yards down the road. And all it is, it's a gate that there's a camera on that they can, you buzz, you press a button, they look at you through that camera. And if you hear the gate go, Bob, it's opening, and they'll just open the gate for you.

or if they want to question you, they'll say, we'll come up to the main booth. So now we're in the car, and there's, I know this because I've planned this out. On Sunday morning, there are only two security guards on duty. Juergen is in the main booth and Sal is in the chase car. When I say a chase car, it's actually like a van that this guy has, and he uses it to chase people if they try to escape. but Sal is down at the place where we have breakfast, which is about 50 yards away from the main boot.

I know this because the chase car is parked outside that building. So I thought, okay, this is going to work. Meanwhile, my heart is in my throat. I get up to the gate. I press the button. He didn't even ask me a question. He just opened up the gate. I slowly pulled out

said to Becky we're turning left Becky I turned left peddled in a metal got it up to about 75 miles an hour because of one mile down the road there are three decisions you have to make

if you turn right you can go to route 10 which will take you to L.A. If you go straight it'll take you to route 60 which takes you to L.A. If you turn left you go into the town of Hemet. I knew that when Sal came there, he would figure

I'm probably going to go turn right to get on 10, to get on the main highway. That's probably what he did. I don't know what he did, but once I turned left, it's a straight mile shot before you get into Hammett. Once I got into Hammett, I turned right, and we were free. That trip across the United States took me almost three days.

I paid for gas, paid for food. We stayed in a motel two nights. everything was paid with cash because if I used my credit card they would check they would got me they would have a way to know where I was they would fly people out to where I probably would be and they would have seized me and taken me back and Becky how much cash had you saved making 50 bucks a week well I was at a point where I was getting a amount of social security so I was getting that also because of my age but a very small amount because I spent 26 years on 26 and a half years on staff and they pay in almost on 50 bucks what do they pay in social

security now how do they did they you get a w2 for that was that like yeah accounted for yeah you can see for the year 2 500 dollars wow man you can't do i mean you you can't do shit with 2 500 a year i don't understand like i would uh i figure most people would just quit so much earlier after making that kind of money like okay this is great scientology is wonderful it teaches you all these great things but you're making $2,500 a year how does that how could that justify making such such a small amount of money because your mind is conditioned into thinking what you're doing is helping every man woman and child on the planet you Danny you don't know that state of mind unless you're in it there was a group at one point way back maybe in the 60s

called the Peace Corps. Do you ever hear that? Yeah. Okay, these guys got pittances, but they did it because they figured they're helping all of men. And with Scientology, and they probably were to some degree, but with Scientology, they talk about clearing the planet. They haven't cleared a fucking cul-de-sac yet.

You know what I'm saying? Yeah. But your mind is upset. You get people on who've been in it for years. They'll all tell you a similar story. So what was your plan? What was your plan? You got on the highway and you drove across the country, you and your wife, what was your

guy's plan? And what happened? What do those guys do once they realized that you were missing? Well, I'm sure the shit hit the fan because for me to leave, that was a terrible thing because I would be considered a really sensitive particle or a security risk. What was my plan? I wanted to live my life in freedom. That's what I wanted to do.

I wanted to get in communication with my two daughters and my grandchildren and see them and maybe go back to playing my horn again or there's exercise devices I was selling. I could do that and just just enjoy life. That's all it was. Did you anticipate them hunting you down after this? Oh, yeah. I know they'd come after me, but I didn't know when. But it wasn't for maybe about almost two weeks that I'm sitting in my wife's, mother's place. And by the way, you know, it's my second marriage. I'm married to a much younger woman.

And we're sitting in her mother's place. And her mother has like a split level home. And I look out the back window in the kitchen. And there's this person, Marion Pau, walking around trying to look through the windows. So I go outside. And there's Greg Wilher and Marion Pau who had come out to salvage me, to bring me back. And they're trying to be jolly and funny. and then saying, oh, Ron, it's so funny because we thought you're going to go to Florida. We never thought you'd come here. But here we are. Ha, ha, ha. You know, and I said, Greg, listen, I'm not going back.

I mean, that was a terrible fucking life I lived so you can just cool it. And then he pulls out this bulletin and he said, you blew. Now, blow is in other words for leave without authorization. Okay? And in that technical bulletin, listen to this, Danny. It says the only reason that a person blows is because they have committed harmful acts to the group that they're a part of. So they want to remove themselves from the group so they don't continue harming it. It doesn't say anything about you could be living such a miserable fucking life that you take anything except staying in that group.

And that's why you left. Doesn't say anything about that. It says that it's your fault that you left because you've been hurting the group and now you want to get away from it not to hurt the group anymore. Does that make sense to you? Oh, yeah. I mean, how convenient for them. Exactly. You're a danger.

That's the only reason you could have left. There's no reasonable explanation for you to leave. You got it entirely. I don't have to tell you another word about that. But I will tell you. they hung around and they started calling me every day and I never answered the call. And so after about a month, we went to visit my son, Ronnie, down in Virginia. And when I came back, I went to the motel that they were staying at and the car was gone.

So they had left. They didn't want to go back because they had to go back and tell David, listen, we didn't get them. And at that point, you're in deep trouble, very deep trouble. So now, year goes by, this is 2013 now, I purchased a house in West Dallas, where I'm talking to you from right now. And across the street, one night there's a guy over there looking in the windows of a house that's for sale. The next door neighbor calls the cops and says, listen, there's some guy looking in the windows of this house that's up for sale. I think he might be a drug dealer. Out comes the West Dallas police,

primarily a guy by the name of Nick Pye, who at that point he was a detective, and he confronted the guy and said, what are you doing? The guy says, what am I breaking a lot? What am I doing wrong? He said, well, I'm just asking you what you're doing. You're looking at this house. And the guy says, you know, you started giving him a bunch of crap. Now, I don't know where he had the guts to do that,

because Nick Pye is built like an NFL linebacker. It looks like he can bench press 400 pounds, and he actually can. Okay? So Nick Pye says, listen, I'll tell you what, you're under arrest. Can I look in your car? The guy says, sure. Nick goes and looks in the trunk of this van, which has blacked out windows, and in the trunk of that van is five license plates from five different states,

five handguns, a stun gun, two rifles, one fitted up with the silencer, and 2,000 rounds of ammunition. What the fuck? Yeah. And by the way, just for your viewers and anybody else, on my website, the real Ron Miscavage.com, you can go there and hear the interrogation that Nick Pye and Ricky Hankins, who was a tobacco, alcohol, and firearms. agent, you can hear the actual interrogation of Dwayne Powell and his son Daniel Powell. They were a father and son team. And here the things I'm starting to tell you right now, they can hear this actual interrogation.

Now, it turned out that they were getting paid $10,000 a week to follow me. And they had to follow me from 8 in the morning to 8 o'clock at night. And then if I went out after that, they still have to work. upon the interrogation once Dwayne Powell knew that he was in deep caca he started singing like a canary

and he said listen we had no meant the man no harm and we used these for target shooting and he was indicted though by the way by the by an eastern Wisconsin court

and the church probably the church because I don't think he'd have the money to do it. Send up an attorney from Chicago that got him on five years probation. But anyway, as part of that interrogation, they mentioned a scene that happened in a local supermarket that I was

shopping for groceries. And this was the summertime. And I had a pocket t-shirt on and I come out to the car, had groceries in the cart, opened the back door and was going to put the groceries in. And I bent over to do that. And I thought

my cell phone was going to fall out of my pocket. So I grabbed my left chest with my right hand. These PIs are in a van. Of course, I didn't know that at the time. They saw me, and the father says to the son, it looks like he's having a heart attack. I should call it and see what we should do. So Dwayne called in,

and a guy come on the phone by the name of Greg, and Greg said, listen, I'll get somebody on a phone for you. Within minutes, another person got on the phone, identified himself as David Miscavage and said, listen, if it's his time to die, let him die. Don't intervene.

Don't do anything. And at that point, when I hung up, the son said, listen, at that point, we knew, if this ever happened, because it looked like I didn't have a heart of 10, he says, I'm calling 9-11. I don't give a fuck what this guy said. I just can't believe he said that.

So now, I get a call in Whitewater this is prior to me knowing about this and actually I didn't get a call I'm sorry Whitewater police came to the door and said listen

I want to tell you you've been being followed by members of the Church of Scientology for the last year and we just like to tell you this and could you come out we want to check your car out for something so they said okay well

the West Dallas police want you to take your car up to them and they're going to check it out for a GPS. So I took it there. You know what a GPS is, right? It's a tracking device? Yes. Yeah, okay. So we took it there.

They took it in the police garage. And Nick Pye is in there and the guys up checking under the wheel wells. And on the right rear, he brought me over and he said, you see those scratches? That's where the GPS was because when you take it out, it's highly magnetized. It will scratch the metal. So now, Nick Pye said to me, okay, so these guys are following you.

Do you have any idea why they were following you? I says, well, Nick, I'm the father of the chairman of the board of the church Scientology. So they might be following me thinking that maybe I'm going to go to the media or the press or something. I have no intention of doing that. And the other reason is this. I've had some heart problems and maybe my son was a little bit concerned about me. Did your light just go out? can you hear me oh no yeah it just got like super dark in there but it's fine now yeah it looked like

there was a little malfunction of something i don't know what the hell it was okay yeah sorry sorry interrupt that's okay so getting back to what nick said he said do you have any idea why they were following you and i said well i'm the chairman of the board of the church assigned i'm the father of the chairman of the board and they considered to me a a sensitive particle that I might go to the press or whatever. And also, maybe my son is a little concerned with me because I've had some health problems with my heart.

And he looked at me and he said, listen, I don't know how to tell you this, but I'm going to have to look. And he told me the story. He said, your son, when you were at Aldi's putting stuff in the car,

the PI's called and said, it looks like you're a target. that's what referred to me as is having a heart attack. Your son come on the line and said, if it's his time to die, let him die. Don't, don't intervene. Don't do anything. Now, when he told me that,

that kind of changed my universe. First of all, I couldn't believe it. And it's just, even to this day, there's that little inkling of, is this true? And it is true. He did say it. Have you ever asked,

Have you ever asked him about it? I called. I tried to get in touch with him. By the way, he has not spoken to me since I left. I called to get in touch with him, and the attorney got on the phone, and he wouldn't let me talk to him. And I said, listen, here's what I want you to do. Just get these P.I.s off my ass. Don't have anybody follow me.

And he said, Ronnie, you knew this was going to be the case when you joined up. I said, no, I didn't. Mike, if somebody would have told me, if you join, you're going to live a sequestered life on a compound. Your mail is going to be read before you send it. You can't get mail in

unless it's checked out. You can't make a phone call. You can't leave that compound. I would have said, fuck you. I'm not going to do this. I know I didn't know it was going to be that. But that situation itself kind of changed my universe

in thinking how he feels about me because at that point his power and being exposed for something like that and a convenient way to have me out of his life would be probably like the best solution in his mind you know?

Yeah. It's terrible, but... Why don't you think, I mean, don't you think there's a possibility of one day your son just coming to grips with reality and just being like, look,

I let me at least repent for some of the damage I've done to this world and and get rid of the policies, these crazy disconnection and fair game policies where if somebody leaves Scientology or questions Scientology, our purpose from now on is to destroy that person's life. That's such an evil thing to do. Like don't you think there's a possibility your son could just be like, maybe we, should just get rid of that shit. Let's get rid of all the Zinu, Galactic Confederacy horseshit. And let's just make this a positive thing. We have our tax exemption. At least I'll be able, you know, I don't know.

Maybe he'll be able to sleep at night. Maybe he'll be able to make up for some of the damage he's done. If you could have rethink this thing. Danny, I agree with you. As a matter of fact, by the way, did you ever get to the end of my book? I know you were going to get it. No, I didn't get to the end of it yet. now. Okay. You'll see

in the end. Well, I'll tell you what I say at the end. And my thinking on it is this. I don't know if it could be salvaged, but if there was a possibility of it being salvaged, they'd have to do several things. One of them would be get rid of all the disconnection policies, okay? Number

one. Number two, give a general amnesty, which means anybody who you feel has done something bad against you, they're forgiven. And there's no question. about it, you wipe the slate clean. It's like a pardon, okay? And number three, only sell products or services that you can deliver an end result.

In other words, those lower bridge products. Because truthfully, if that would have happened in the beginning when Scientology started, just the things that worked, like the communications course, the lower level, two-way communication with somebody, that you feel better about it after you're done, I thought. I think it would have been a great self-health group. As it stands now, they don't shoot themselves in the foot with a 22. They shoot themselves in the foot with a shotgun.

There's no turning around right now. If they would do what you just said, that would be wonderful. Danny, I tell you, I have almost no hope of it happening. I swear to God. I wish it would happen. And I wish my daughters would come to the senses and say, hey listen we're going to talk to you dad and everybody who's been disconnected from a family who's in the church and they're not really a church because the one common denominator about other

religions is that they have compassion for the fellow man let me ask you this if you if you had a gun to your head right now and somebody said i need you to get a hold of your daughters and your son and have a conversation with them about this what would you do i couldn't get in touch with them. They wouldn't allow to call to go through. I've already tried. I was in New York City doing an interview with 2020 from Australia, and I called the organization, and I wanted to speak to David Muscavage. They put me on hold, and I would have been on hold forever. If I call my daughter Denise, I don't get through. Their lines are blocked to me. I can't speak to them. I went down there. Danny, after I got this interrogation on a CD, what these guys said,

I went down to Florida with my wife. We drove down when we were about 20 miles within the city limit. We had three private investigators start following this. I went to my daughter, Lori's house. No answer at the door. I went to Denise's house. Her husband came to the door. I said, I want to speak to Denise.

He said, well, you can't. He said, you've got to handle it with the church. I said, Jerry, come on. This is a waste of fucking time. I'm not going to get any place with that. We spoke for about 20 minutes. You won't even let me in a house. I said, what does this mean, Jerry?

I'll tell you what it means, Ron. Denise and I are through with you and Becky forever. It was at that point that I decided I'm writing a book. That was the point. Prior to that, all I wanted to do was get on with my life, get back in communication with my daughters, and enjoy life. At that point, I figured I've got to do something. And as you know, and the book is called Routless,

it was number one on a New York Times bestseller list on May 6th. 2016 when it came out and it was number one for the month of June of the nonfiction books and Darth Vader even Darth Vader at one point when his son when Luke was getting electrocuted by the emperor

found some a little seed of love for his son at the end of the movie like there's something deep very deep and down that connection with your son like don't you ever think of like your kid like think of David when he was like a young kid one or two or three years old

and like that kid's still in there. I'll tell you. Of course I do. And even now, I mean, people want me to condemn him and throw him in hell and just say that the fucking guy's no good. He should go to jail. I can't generate that much hate for him.

I just can't do it. You have a child. And now, if it's a psychopath, it's a little different because the psychopaths, has no conscience. They have no care for anybody. But when you have a child and you see this new person

that you help bring in the life, that's a love that is just, it's overwhelming. It's something else. And I can't say, I hope the fucker is this or does that. I just can't generate that much hate. And you'll see at the end of the book

what I say, the finale here, I'm not going to say it on a program. If people want to know, they should get it and read it because I think it's a very fair book. And I wrote it from the viewpoint of not vindictive or I'm going to get you bastards. But I wanted to tell a story of how you can get involved in something that you think is going to be something great. And it turns out when I say not too good, that's being very gracious. It turns out pretty goddamn bad because you can end up losing your family, your friends and a good portion of your life to,

a cause that can't be backed up by what they say it can do. I mean, that's, I think Scientology over promises and underdelivers. And I'm being very gracious when I just say that. Because I've met these people who have done these highest levels, and they can't do any of the superhuman things that they say that you're going to gain when you get to that level. What is it that they say that you can actually do when you get to the top level? Well, they used to advertise this. I don't know if they do anymore.

They used to say that when you get that, you are at cause over life, and you can operate independent of your body. In other words, you could have an out-of-body experience as an example and go and read the newspapers in Germany while you're sitting here in the United States. Whoa. Did they ever teach you how to do that? There's techniques that are in the books. Nobody, listen, I was around for 42 years. I didn't meet one person who achieved it. Well, can you give me an example of a technique to get your spirit outside of your body?

Well, it's in a book called Creation of Human Ability. Be on the moon. Be on Mars. Be on the moon. Be on Earth. You know, right. It just imagination things. You're imagining these things, but you're supposed to think you're actually doing it in life.

So I just sit here. And I imagine that I'm in Germany reading a newspaper. Well, no. In that case, when it comes to that point, if you were to achieve the ability to exteriorize from your body and be in Germany, you would be there as the life force, the spirit that you are. Because, well, I don't know if you believe this, but it's not critical to this discussion we're having. You are a spirit. you are a living spirit. You're occupying a body.

You as a spirit are the thing that is the life. That life could go to Germany and actually read the newspaper and tell somebody in the United States what it said. That ability is touted as being possible, even in the books like creation of human ability. But on that level, in those days, earlier on, days to see, you would achieve exterior with full perception.

Wow. So you would feel like you were actually there, even though your cadaver wouldn't be there. Exactly. Exactly. Are you sure no one's ever done it? I never met anybody. I never met anybody. And I was there with the guy, listen to this, who did that level. And this is bullshit, but I'm going to tell it. You're supposed to be at cause over mental energy, and even matter energy space and time. In other words, over the universe. We are going to go in a room. This is when I was in the C organization.

And the door is locked. And there's another person with us. And the other person says, well, look, said to this guy, you're OTA. Why don't you just use your powers to open the door? And he said, no, no, I will never do it. I did it one time. And a person saw it, they got very sick. I'm never going to do it again.

That's horseshit, man. He couldn't do it. Whoa. But they would make excuses, you know, as to why they were not doing it. And even El Ron Hubbard gave them a convenient excuse. He said, now, listen, before you start reading Rodegerivore, and that's another word for printed stuff. You know the word Rota Gavir? No, no.

I think it referred to print in a newspaper. He said, before you start. reading roto gervier in another area, be careful because you're going to need a lot of backup. In other words, you might get attacked by alien beings if you do this. So wait until a lot of people achieve this level before you start doing it. So that gives people an excuse who've done the level to not do it and have it justified because Elaron Hubbard said not to do it. Jesus Christ. I'm telling you, man, listen, I wish I were fucking lying to you.

Okay. I mean, I wish I were telling the fucking lie, but boy, I happen to be telling you the truth, Danny. I happen to be telling you the truth. And I have a friend, not a good friend, but a friend. And he achieved OTA, had a massive heart attack, and then he was in a hospital in the coma for six months. That the fuck. People get on that level. They die just like everybody else does from various diseases.

There's no difference. And if you get the right treatment, and I don't know, maybe you pray to God, maybe you'll live longer, but it's not going to be done by doing the Scientology upper levels. It's just they're not truthful. And boy, I'm being very gracious when I say that. What they want more than anything is your money. They want your money and they want your loyalty and back them up, do everything to help them out. don't create any bad PR. That's bad if you,

if you create bad public relations, you're a bad man, you know? Do you think Tom Cruise or John Travolta will ever be like, you know what, fuck this, I'm out?

I think the possibility of that happening would be about the same as a penguin coming in a room where I'm sitting right now and playing an alto saxophone. That's not too likely,

but the possibility of that happening might be just about the same as them saying, fuck this, I'm out. The penguin is wearing a corduroy jacket? No, I don't think he could get the jacket on. He'd be holding the sacks in his hands, you know? Oh, true. But look at, I don't know how they would do it. I don't, they'd have to eat a lot of crow.

I do, listen, I do, in addition to the interviews, I do what I call life lessons. I do story time. There's a little exercise apparatus I discovered, and I do this for my fellow veterans because it's inexpensive and you can work out with it. And I try to do helpful things. And one of the things on life lessons, I tell what is the hardest thing you'll ever do? And I already told you this.

Do you remember what I said it was? No, what was it? Admit you are wrong. Oh, yeah. People can't do it. They can't do it. If you could, I will tell you, it will change your life because I remember when Fernando Gamboa,

good friend of mine, really a nice individual, great drummer too. He was in the C organization with me. He left a lot earlier. One day we're talking, and this is a couple of years ago, more than a couple of years ago, and he said, come on, Ronnie, let's admit it. We were conned. When I got off the phone, I went into the hallway of my house, which I have a full-end mirror,

and I looked at myself in the mirror, and I said, Hey, Ron, you were conned. You were wrong. At that point, my life started changing quite a bit. I could look at myself and say, okay, now, here's what I thought. That was wrong.

I got conned. I accepted it. It was my doing. I didn't justify why I was wrong. Like if you were to say, well I was wrong yeah but the reason I was wrong no you haven't admitted it at that point wow the irony the irony from the irony from staring in the mirror getting your headache out of your out of your body to staring in the mirror telling yourself you're conk you've come

you've come full circle I came full circle Danny and I'm going to tell you something I think the highest level of operating Thayton is where you are now let me tell you Danny, I got to give you credit. I never thought about it until you just said it to me. I got to give you credit, man. That's funny. I got to give you credit. That is.

But when you're in it, sometimes it's hard, but you're right. I think full circle. You did. Well, hey, man, we're at two hours. So let's wrap it up. Can you tell the audience listening where they can find your book, where they can find everything about you if they want to do some more research on you okay if you go to the real ron moscavage dot com you will get my website and you'll know it's the right one if when it comes up

it says right across the top it must stop and there's a guy sitting on a bench in front of a body of water that's my website i tell you that because the church a while ago bought 500 variations of my name. And if you're put in the wrong one and not the real Ron Miscarvage.com, it'll take you to their hate sites. On that website, you will see all of my YouTube shows. You'll see the interrogation

that the West Dallas police did with the two private investigators who were following me. You can listen to that. You can see there's a link there to get my book. You can just go to Ruthless. I've also done two humorous books, One's called True Confessions of a Kid,

and the other one's called Hideouts for Midgets on the Lamb. They're just humorous books. I did it for laughs. You can get those on there, too. And you can see the 2020 interview, other interviews I've done, and you can learn about me. And I appreciate it if you would and get yourself educated and enlightened it. There's over 90 interviews I've done with people who have been abused by the church.

Danny, I've got to tell you, I thank you very much for, having me on. You're a very, very nice person and you gave me the realization that I never had and I did come full circle. It's a fucking 10. No, I'm telling you, man. There's a 10. That's great, man. Well, I appreciate you for doing this as well. And I'll include your, I'll include your links below. Okay, buddy. All right. Take care. Yeah, bye-bye.