Lex Fridman Podcast - #361 – Aaron Smith-Levin: Scientology

Episode Date: February 26, 2023

Aaron Smith-Levin is a former Scientologist, Vice President of the Aftermath Foundation, and host of the Growing Up In Scientology YouTube channel. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - Green Chef: https://greenchef.com/lex60 and use code lex60 to get 60% off plus free shipping - InsideTracker: https://insidetracker.com/lex to get 20% off - Athletic Greens: https://athleticgreens.com/lex to get 1 month of fish oil EPISODE LINKS: Aaron's YouTube: https://youtube.com/@GrowingUpInScientology Aaron's Twitter: https://twitter.com/GrowingupinSCN The Aftermath Foundation: https://theaftermathfoundation.org SP Shop: https://thespshop.com Books mentioned: 1. A Billion Years: https://amzn.to/3EpLiMM 2. Blown for Good: https://amzn.to/3IqaZxN PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: - Check out the sponsors above, it's the best way to support this podcast - Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman - Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman - Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman OUTLINE: Here's the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. (00:00) - Introduction (06:00) - Thetans (09:59) - Dianetics (22:02) - God (32:38) - Sea Org (36:48) - Auditing (57:01) - Control (1:07:25) - David Miscavige (1:16:32) - Xenu (1:32:26) - Secrecy (1:38:29) - Mike Rinder (1:45:36) - Separation of families (1:52:30) - Tom Cruise (1:56:23) - Sin (2:01:19) - Corruption

The following is a conversation with Aaron Smith, 11, a former Scientologist raised in Scientology and have worked in the organization full-time for many years as a staff member and a C.O.R. member, including the job of training Scientology auditors. Today, he educates the public about Scientology on his YouTube channel called Growing Up in Scientology. And now, a quick use I can mention of a sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. We got green chef for delicious and healthy,

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But the keto meals from a green chef is really, that's, this is ridiculous. But the keto meals from Green Chef is really, that's my go-to, it's delicious. I really highly recommend it. Also, it gives variety to my intake, which makes me feel like I'm enjoying life even more than I already have been. Anyway, go to greenchef.com slash Lex60 and use code Lex60 to get 60% off plus free shipping.

As greenchef.com slash Lex60 and use code Lex60 for 60% off plus free shipping. This shows also brought to you by InsideTracker. As service I use to track the data that comes from the biological system that some refer to as a Lex Friedman, but I'm just a collection of cells. I'm underneath that a collection of atoms. I'm a collection of a lot of things, billionist trillions, and somehow they're all like in this one bag that move together. This meat vehicle that operates with other meat vehicles in meat space and does interesting things and is worried and is hopeful and is

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Its ideas, how it operates, how it wields its power and influence. And let's start at the very basics. What is Scientology? Scientology is a belief system created by Elren Hubbard that does fundamentally believe that we are all immortal spiritual beings called Thetans, that we have native God-like potential, that there is nothing more powerful in the universe than a Thayton. So God-like is quite literal here. And that through various decisions Thayons have made, they have fallen away from their native God-like power, have made. They have fallen away from their native God-like power to fallen down to a state where most theons aren't even aware that they are theatans, aren't even aware that they ever

have lived before or have these powers. And that theons are now in a state where they're trapped in bodies, trapped here on earth, trapped in this prison of a physical universe, trapped on this prison of a planet, and that only Scientology can restore a thing to its native state. Are these multiple beings? Like is there one Thaithin inside of me that's trapped in this prison? Well the thing would be you. The thing would be me. The Thaithin is you.

But I'm presumably limited in some fundamental way. So this Satan that is me is is limited so there's like eight billion Satan's on the planet. There's one primary thing animating each body. Later in Scientology you learn there's actually like tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of like sick, unconscious, half dead, face and stuck to you that are now an additional cause of problems for you. But fundamentally, at the lower levels, the non-confidential levels, there's just one thing in per body.

Well, I mean, it's an interesting idea. I would like to kind of explore the philosophy of that. So there's a being that's all powerful that's immortal, and its projection, its manifestation on this earth is fundamentally limited. And you're trying to, the process of Scientology is the process of letting go of those limitations. You know, that's an interesting idea. I mean, a lot of religions have this kind of idea that there's That's an interesting idea. I mean, a lot of religions have this kind of idea that there's not just religions,

but like we have the capacity as human beings to achieve greatness in all kinds of ways. And that's the question we have with our cognitive abilities, we start with the embryo and build up into this organism and like this world of opportunities before us, what are we capable of? And the idea that we're capable of almost anything is really powerful one. And there's a lot of religions, there's we capable of? And the idea that we're capable of almost anything is a really powerful one.

And there's a lot of religions, there's a lot of philosophies, there's a lot of advice, self-help, that kind of explore those ideas. And so it seems like with Scientology, the application of these religious philosophy means that there's, we're limited and we have to break through those limitations. And there's a process to break through those limitations.

That would be correct. So what can make it challenging to adequately and completely describe Scientology in the beginning is what Scientologists believe actually changes as they progress further into or further up in Scientology. So the explanation is that I've given it is pretty consistent with what you would get at the lowest levels, right? You're a Thayton. I'm a Thayton. Everyone's a Thayton. And we have a reactive mind. Elrun Hubbard would say the reactive mind is

a collection of these recordings, mental recordings of any moments of pain and unconsciousness you've ever had in your life. It's like the subconscious mind. It's always recording in moments of pain and unconsciousness and that these are called, these recordings are called, I'll run Hubbard called them N grams. Now when I'll run Hubbard first wrote Diagnetics in 1950, this was before Scientology came along a couple of years later, right? So in 1950 when you wrote Diagnetics, 1950. This was before Scientology came along a couple years later, right? So in 1950 when you wrote Diagnetics, it wasn't a spiritual endeavor. It was supposed to be a mental

health, a science of mental health. So as of that time, the earliest N-gram you could have was the incident of birth being born, was an Ngram. And technically in Dynetics, you said you could have prenatal endgrams, like when you're still in the womb. But there was no concept of past lives as of 1950 version of Dynetics, right? And so the idea there was that the reactive mind is essentially a stimulus response mechanism created through evolution millions of years ago to protect the individual from things that would harm them. In other words, things that would bring about pain and unconsciousness. So, yeah, these recordings of things that hurt you, created pain and unconsciousness.

And in present time, these things will react upon you in a way to cause you to avoid similar things reacting upon you in a subconscious, unconscious way. So the react to my protects you from the trauma that is inside your subconscious mind. Yes, and the idea is we've now as human beings evolved to a state where it no longer serves us beneficially and only serves us negatively. This was Hubbard's theory. And he said, so you can get rid of these Ngrams by basically recalling them and going over them again and again using dionetics, auditing therapy. And if you get back to the moment of birth and erase the earliest Ngram, all the other subsequent

Ngrams on the chain would vanish. Oh, nice. So there's a chain. Earlier similar, earlier, similar, earlier earlier similar earlier similar earlier similar. Okay. So that gives you a pretty good understanding of how L. Rahn Hubbard thought of the mind Because that carries on has applicability later on in Scientology. I mean, that's a pretty powerful model of the mind I mean Freud had similar conceptions that a lot of our traumas are grounded in sort of poor formulation

of sexuality or imperfect formulation of sexuality, you know, childhood, something like this. And then we're trying to figure out the puzzle, whatever we formed in early childhood. Right. And it's similar, similar kind of. It is similar. It's probably what Huber took it from. In the early days of the genetics before he decided psychiatry was evil, he actually credited Sigmund Freud with some of the shoulders he was standing on in writing

Dynetics. So he still admired psychiatry at that time. So that's an interesting moment of Dynetics. So what else, you mentioned Dynetics auditing was there too. So if we just before Scientology, what are the ideas that formed what we know as dynex? As I've just described, that is the fundamental. That is pretty much the nuts and bolts of dynex. Was it applied? Was it applied often? Oh, yeah, that's what dynex in the early days was all about. It was just auditing. Auditing is the process of the one-on-one counseling, recall a moment of pain and unconsciousness,

run through the angrily, and over and over again, find something earlier similar. That is dyinetic auditing. One of the main things that changed with scientology is that birth or prenatal angrilym is we're no longer the earliest angrilym on the chain. The idea is you have to get the earliest angrilym on the chain for the later ones to blow, which is a race. But all of a sudden now, with the addition of an immortal spiritual being into the equation, well now the earliest incident could be trillions of years ago in other galaxies and universes. Other universes?

So before the universe? Oh, yeah. And of this universe? Yeah. Is there a model of physics integrated in any of this? No. The model is you have the physical universe and then above that you have the Theta universe. So we used the word Thayton earlier.

So in Scientology, we'll use word Theta. I don't know, Theta's just basically Thayton power. Thayton's collectively. So Hubbard would say you have the Theta universe, which is senior to the physical universe and creates the physical universe. And remember, I said, I said native God-like potentials. So we're not talking about the God who created the earth. We're just like scientists, I'll just don't believe in a God, but we'll

get into that later. We're talking about creating just creating universes, like just thinking like matrix, like just when I say creating universe, essentially just creating different things and simulations. But it sounds like a little bit more like the ideas of Plato, which is there's these Platonic forms, there's abstract forms that are bigger, more general than our particular Reality here and those forms that used to construct the reality. Well, I grew up in a cult So I'm not familiar with the works of Plato You can't use that as an excuse for everything. I would like to, you know, non-jokingly steal man in the case because a lot of philosophies,

a lot of religions, a lot of even scientific endeavors are a little bit full of uncertainty. You can call it bullshit, but you're on a 30-gram because we're surrounded by mystery. And you have to take these ideas somewhat seriously and see where those ideas go wrong. This happens with communism, this happens with capitalism. These ideas sound beautiful in their ideal forms. And then they somehow go wrong and some go more wrong than others.

And so I don't think sort of, it's easy to sort of caricature and make fun of the ideas. I think if we take them seriously, you'll start to understand like when you're in it, it was serious. It can be very convincing. It's, you know, the devil is going to be a charismatic person. He's not going to be a caricature or a ridiculous person. So that helps us understand which ideas will sound appealing but will become dangerous. I totally agree. In fact, it's one of the thrusts I have on my channel is wanting to talk about Scientology in a way that would actually resonate with current Scientologists. Yeah, not just resonate with former Scientologists. I want people who are still in to be able to hear how I talk about it and go

Wow, he's being really fair and really accurate. He's not just a hater, you know what I mean. If you look at the, you know, let's take one of the worst places on earth, is North Korea, you have Kim Jong Un. And the reality is there's a lot of citizens of that nation that deeply love the leader. Because they've grew up in that way, and you, I mean, through fear, through all kinds of manipulation, through propaganda, and so on, they're not allowed to love members of their own family, they're not allowed to have romantic love, they're only allowed to have love for the leader. And to reach those people, you have to empathize with the fact that in their eyes, in some

sense, this is a great man, this is a God, a messionic figure. You can't just make fun of the ridiculousness of the situation that is this pudgy person while seeing around creating propaganda. That's a funny haircut. It's a funny haircut. It's so easy and Hitler too to make fun of, to make a caricature of the person, but this is a real person, a real person that influenced the minds of millions of people, in the case of Hitler, you know, tens of millions of people, and created a huge

amount of suffering, not because of the caricature version, but because he was a charismatic leader, he was somebody that people deeply, deeply loved, and that just over time, I mean, with the abuse of any kind of ideology, this happens over and over. And so, yeah, it's interesting because Scientology is so close to the to the core of what is America, because so many Americans are involved with it. So it's interesting to study the beauty and the power of the ideas that underlie it and where things go wrong. Yeah. And I'll just say it's interesting to note, you would never get a representative of the Church of Scientology to sit down and have a conversation with you and even be as fair and accurate about Scientology as I'm going to be, which is noteworthy.

Do you honestly deeply believe that's the case? There's not going to be a high level official that would sit down for a conversation. No, I disagree with you. I hope you're right. Because I think that given the current dynamics of what's happening, I think in order to say, from their perspective, in order to save the church's Scientology,

they have to be transparent and authentic, basically steal men their case, but better. You would think so. Well, we'll talk about the other ways you could do that was just the manipulation through propaganda, through control of media and all that kind of stuff. They paint themselves into a corner of not being able to send a representative out into the world to speak honestly about it because you're literally not allowed to. So when faced, you know, if you're just sitting down

with an entertainment journalist of representative might be able to fudge their way through an interview, but sitting down for a long form, format interview with someone who is gonna ask them about Zee Noo and the body fatens and Lyraemony and Lisa McPherson, that's a no-go zone. So I'm representing why it will never happen, but shit, I would turn in for that interview.

I mean, I hope you do get someone. You don't think David Muscat was just a down for an interview. I would love to be wrong. You know, in general, in these kinds of situations, can be, can attack in a way that doesn't empathize, and doesn't come from a place of deep knowledge and understanding. And I think it's possible to have serious conversations with people like that in an empathetic way, but it's also in a challenging way.

I think there's a huge amount of trust required. And obviously for a very secretive organization, the amount of trust, yes, might be too much required. Anyone over there, if they've done their homework, knows you're going to be as fair as anyone in the world's going to be. the amount of trust, yes, might be too much. Yes. Of a part. Anyone over there, if they've done their homework, knows, you're going to be as fair as anyone in the world's going to be. And yet, there are simply things they're not allowed to talk about, and they're not even allowed to say, I'm not allowed to talk about it. So that's a fundamental part of the Church of Scientology is the secrecy.

Yeah. So that's what you're trained as you go up through the ranks as secrecy, secrecy. It's not even a matter of training. It's that there's an entire, the entire upper half of Scientology's bridge is simply confidential. I mean, and I never even did those levels when I was in Scientology. I didn't learn what Scientologists actually believe on those upper levels until after I got out of Scientology and I was freaking born and raised in it. Let's go there. Let's go to a personal story. So you've spent 30 years in cytology. Yeah, I was four years old when my mom got in.

And then about seven years ago, I got out. Yeah. And you're on what YouTube channel now, and you're an educator. So I was four years old when my mom got introduced to Scientology. And she got in really fast, really quick. So I was 12 years old when I was taken out of school and started officially full-time working for Scientology.

Okay, so in various capacities, I worked for them from the ages of 12 to the age of 26. Okay, so, and then I was 34 when I officially parted ways with Scientology, which was really more than officially parting ways with me, but we can get in all that later. That's just how Scientology does it. And what do you do know in terms of Scientology?

So now I run growing up in Scientology, the YouTube channel, but what I primarily do is I help run an organization that helps people who are escaping from Scientology. I'm the vice president of the Aftermath Foundation. And we created the foundation after the television show, Leoremini Scientology in the Aftermath. And there was such an outpouring of support from non-scientologists all over the world. What can we do to help people leave Scientology? That we decided to create a foundation, and it's been incredibly successful. We've helped people escape from all

regions and echelons of Scientology. We've accomplished what we've accomplished is far beyond what we actually envisioned would be possible. It's been a huge success. So we'll talk about the negative aspect, the abuses of power, but let's just explore the ideas a little bit more. So the public facing three fundamental truths of Scientology, maybe correct me if I'm wrong. Man is an immortal spiritual being, like we've said with Satan's, his experience extends well beyond a single lifetime.

So infinite memory backwards. His capabilities are unlimited, even if not presently realized. The capabilities are unlimited. Yeah, so that when I say God like, I really just mean, you know, Thanos, like unlimited. Scientologists don't believe in a God. So when I say God like, I just mean the most powerful entity, the creator, the prime mover, unmoved, except we are all that, you know, a

Thayton indefinite, in Scientology, a Thaian has no position in space or time. A Thaian does not actually exist in the physical universe. It might choose to locate itself in the physical universe, and then forget that it made that decision and then sort of get caught and trapped in the physical universe, but that once the Thaian is restored to its native powers, everything you see here in the physical universe

is just a thing playing a game. Like, literally, we are in a simulation right now of some Thaden. So, like physics doesn't have to make sense when we're talking about it this way. Like, technically, you're a Thaden, I'm a Thaden, we're here, but this could also all just be another Thaden's game.

So, Thaden's all the way down. Yeah, it just, Thaden's everywhere, Thaden's all comes down to the thing. Is there an idea of a God? Because I read there's a kind of, there is a sense of a supreme being. Is that basically the thing that's at the core at the bottom

of it all? Yes. Yes. Not, not defined, undefined. Correct. Scientology has this concept of the dynamics, however, breaks life into a different dynamics. And the dynamic meaning of thrust towards survival.

So he would say, you know, the first dynamic is you yourself. Second dynamic is your family. Third dynamic is any other group that you're a part of other than your family. Fourth dynamic is all humankind. The fifth dynamic is playing animal life, all non-human life. Sixth dynamic is the physical world. Seventh dynamic is plant an animal life, all non-human life. The sixth dynamic is the physical world. The seventh dynamic is sort of like spirituality collectively,

Satan's, us as statins. And the eighth dynamic, Elrond Herbert says, Scientology doesn't deal with the eighth dynamic, but we recognize that people have this idea of a supreme being. And so Scientology says, you can call the eighth dynamic the supreme being dynamic, but we call it infinity. Just the allness of everything without having to define it.

And then they sort of do a little dance and they're like, Scientology, the purpose of Scientology is to get you to the point where you have your own understandings or realizations about the nature of the 8th dynamic. We don't tell you what you have to believe about that. And technically speaking, that is true. Technically speaking, that is true. Technically speaking, that is true. There's no point in Scientology where they sit you down and say you're not required to revoke

your belief in a Supreme Being. It's just that everything in Scientology is inconsistent with a belief in the Supreme Being. You can still find Scientologists who through cognitive dissonance will tell you they believe in a Supreme Being. Mostly they're lying to you. How is this inconsistent with the Supreme Being? Because like, Thadin's because they have created

everything, not God. Okay. So Thadin's creative. They're also creative for us. They're not just the force that runs everything. Right. But can't those be just the fingertips of God? Sure. The only way you could reconcile a supreme being is if you say a single supreme being created all theta Yeah, like the spiritual big bang But that's not what most people think when they sit when they talk about God They're talking about a creator of The physical universe. Yes. There's no theta. Right. I mean even as I've described Scientology so far None of what I've said is something I even subject

to riddocule. This is pretty common sense stuff actually. I mean, if you believe in spirituality or spirits at all, there's nothing I've described so far that's crazy. Yeah. You know, believing in past lives isn't particularly unique or special, right? The fact that Scientology does this little dance

of pretending to believe in a God, I mean, it's even like a PR line that Scientology does this little dance of pretending to believe in a God, I mean, it's even like a PR line. Scientology representatives will tell you you can be a Christian and be a Scientologist. Let me tell you what, Christians don't believe in past lives and lives on other galaxies and planets and universes. But in Scientology knows that. Scientology knows you can't be a Christian and be a Scientologist, but they will say that it's just an example of sort of the fundamental baked-in dishonesty. Because it's so important to Scientology knows that. Scientology knows you can't be a Christian and be a Scientologist, but they will say that. It's just an example of sort of the fundamental baked-in dishonesty. Because it's so important to Scientology and the organizational level to have text-exempt status, I wonder, do you know the process of what it takes to prove that some organization

is a religion? While going through that process with the IRS for the second time, by the way, Scientology actually had tax exemption in the early days and the IRS pulled it, and then they got it back in 1993. While going through that process again, the IRS actually took issue with the fact that Scientology was claiming you could be a Scientologist and a member of another religion.

The IRS actually said, pump the brakes there. If you're gonna say that, we're gonna say you're not a religion. And they actually put in writing to the IRS. No, no, no, no, no, that's not what we meant. That's not what we meant. We meant in the beginning, you can be both, but eventually you just have to be a Scientologist. So you mentioned the eight dynamics, but you also mentioned survival.

So that seems to be a core principle that that human existence is about survival. Can you elaborate what is meant by survival? We're talking about the survival of the human species, survival of the individual humans, survival of the the manifestation of Thetans in human form. What what do we what survival? So it would be all of that because survival is the the dominant force across all the dynamics that I mean I'll run Hubbard What, what, what's survival? So it would be all of that because survival is the, the dominant force across all the dynamics. That, I mean, Elrond Hubbard, it was either dionetics or science of survival.

He, he says he discovered the principle upon which all life exists. And that is all life, no matter what it is trying to do. Are you ready, Lex? It's trying to survive. That's pretty powerful. That's pretty powerful. Here's it is trying to do. Are you ready, Lex? It's trying to survive. That's pretty powerful. That's pretty powerful. Here's it.

Here's it. I gotta tell you, I gotta, you might get me back in, Lex. No, I'm not, I'm not trying to get you back in. I'm trying to take you, get you to take seriously the power of the ideas behind Scientology because I think those ideas are not bad ideas.

They resonate with a lot of ideas throughout philosophy, throughout religions, throughout the history of human civilization. The interesting aspect is how it goes wrong. But here's the thing, Lex, here's the thing. It is consistent with prior efforts or studies. It's just that L. Rohn Hubbard said this

with a watershed breakthrough that was being discovered for the first time. That's kind of what I'm mocking, really. Yeah, but you can mock Nietzsche for saying, man is will to power. You can mock Roy. But did he claim to be the first person to ever say it? Well, Nietzsche, he's had a bit of a niggle.

So like, and he's full of contradictions, but I'm pretty sure the implied thing is that he was the first to say it. There's a lot of scientists. There's one of the people I really admire, Stephen Wolfram, who wrote a book called A New Kind of Science that explores complex systems and cellular automata and these mathematical systems that have been explored before, but he boldly defined, I am presenting to you a whole new way to look at the world. And if you just set a little bit of the ego

behind that aside, there's actually beautiful ideas in there. They have, of course, been done before and explored before. But sometimes people declare this is the coolest. That's the only thing I'm really mocking is, yes, this discovery that life is trying to survive is greater than the discovery of fire. Okay, I mean, it gets a little silly, but that's fine. We can agree that the fact that life is trying to survive has meaning and is meaningful and can be is valuable and it's true. I mean, life is trying to survive. Also, there's a non-trial definition of what is life here.

So, this idea of a thing that permeates through lifetimes, through people, there's some fabric that is bigger than individual biological bags of meat. That's a philosophically-enishing idea. Of course, if it's not grounded in a little bit more physical reality, then it becomes a little to woo-woo. And the way Elrond Harbor and Scientology defines survival is very much intertwined with how they define ethics. Ethics, anything, you know, to be ethical is pro-survival, to be unethical is counter-survival.

But we were talking about just the concept of the dynamics, like what does survival refer to? And it actually does refer to all of them, but just keep in mind when it comes to the seventh dynamic, Thaithens collectively involved in here's the idea that a Thaithen cannot die. There's no such thing as killing a Th. A thing can only survive. And so, anyway, this concept of the dynamics is one of the most fundamental and important concepts in Scientology. But because I mentioned that, it also gets tied up with ethics. And this probably speaks to what you're just talking about, is you can have the ideas and the concepts, then you can have how do they go wrong? Because they hold that

Scientology, Applying Scientology, getting people into Scientology is the key to basically saving every spiritual being in existence. When you're analyzing what is ethical, it becomes whatever's good for Scientology becomes by definition ethical because anything that's good for Scientology, which is a third dynamic, is inherently good for all the dynamics. So that's where you get the ends justifying the means to do anything possible, use any means necessary to forward the aims of Scientology. That's kind of where a lot of Soviet implementation of communism went wrong, is the end, justify the means, the equality, the justice for the workers.

If we have to kill, murder, and prison censor, in the name of that, then it's for the greater good in the long term to achieve the ideal of communism. In some respects, Scientology created a near-perfect communist experiment in its sea organization. What is it? From everyone according to their ability to each according to their need or something like that? Scientology sea organization is damn near-perfect communist experiment. Coming from someone who doesn't necessarily know what a perfect communist experiment really is because I'm not grew up in a cult like. You can't keep this. It's a funny tagline of using my videos. I like it.

But it is interesting that an organization that is so hyper capitalist and so money-hungry and is known to be very wealthy at its core is run by this group of seorg members that live a communist lifestyle. We're gonna jump around. Let's go. What is seorg, what is seorg organization?

What is this organization? The seorg organization is the most dedicated version, the most dedicated brand of Scientologists. So there's three like echelons of Scientologists. There's public who just live normal lives in the real world and they pay to do Scientology courses and auditing. Then there's staff members who also live in the real world, but work on two and a half year contracts

or five year contracts at their local Scientology organization and then once they finish their contract there, their debt is paid or whatever. And then there's the C-org members. These are the guys who signed the billion year contracts. They don't have lives in the outside world. They don't own property. They live in Scientology provided housing.

They eat Scientology, they eat Scientology run cafeterias. Is there an actual contract that says a billion years? It's symbolic, but yes. Okay. Like, no, it's not a legally enforceable contract. Ha ha ha. They haven't succeeded in enforcing it in any subsequent lifetimes yet.

Marriage contract should be like that. A billion year. Because I mean, that's what I was part of a billion years. It really makes it very concrete of what you're signing up for. Yeah. Those are the billion year guys. You hear a lot about the billion year contract,

the billion year contract, that's the seorg. And all of Scientology management, International Management, Middle Management, Continental Management, and even some lower level service orcs are composed 100% of seorg members. You're not allowed to marry or date someone who's not in the seorg. You also not allowed to have children. With anybody outside of seorg, you're going general, you're not allowed to marry or date someone who's not in the sea or you also not allowed to have children With anybody outside of the sea or going general you're not allowed to have children

Sea org members are not allowed to have children unless they leave the sea org if you they're expected to Have an abortion and stay in the sea org because it's the greatest good for Scientology if you accidentally get pregnant Interesting because it distracts from the focus of the work. Yeah. What about sexual relations only once married But that's why people get married after like three days. You're like hey you you look you're all right Let's get married. Are you allowed to have divorce? Yeah, you get divorced a lot in the seorg I've known people get married divorce three times by like by the age of 25 Oh wow because in the seorg getting married is practically like dating right also Unless you're married you're living in dorms with a bunch of other people.

So in order to get your own room, you also have to get married. So there's many benefits. Oh, wow. Okay. So you mentioned communism in which way? Because is there a hierarchy inside sea or is there a redistribution of influence, position, money, power? Is that a C-org?

Everyone in the C-org makes $50 a week. Everybody except David and Miss Gavitch, but. And some posts might have a cash bonus incentive structure, but fundamentally their pay is $50 a week. So even the head of a big Scientology organization is getting $50 a week. So even the head of a big Scientology organization is getting 50 bucks a week. Our celebrities also part of the sewer, going to not usually. So this is really the management layer. So what's the idea behind 50 dollars a week? Is that basically live a humble life? They don't have to give you anything at all. It's just, oh, you mean like, what's the idea behind

not paying? Yeah, basically not paying. Everything you need's already been provided for you. You're not here for the money. You're working all the time anyway. It's not like you don't have days off. I mean, you're working all the time. There's no concept of the weekends. There's no, thank God, it's Friday.

Friday's just another day. And how are the positions, the tasks, the jobs allocated within the CWORG? What kind of tasks you're doing, what kind of stuff you're doing? It's very similar to just any other business as far as you can have your human resources, you can have your sales, you can have your accounting, your operations, your quality control. It's just that in Scientology, your operations is delivering courses and auditing. So your operations and your quality control

are that were most of the activity occurs as far as delivering Scientology. And then you've got your, you call it business development, but that's just bringing in new members, right? So the, the function of Scientology's organization is very, very comparable to a normal business in the normal world. So let's talk about the products of this business, auditing and courses. So what's auditing? So auditing is, so we described earlier, dyinetics auditing. Scientology auditing is very similar to that. So at first glance, it looks like psychotherapy, a kind of therapy.

All Scientology auditing is going to look like that. It's one-on-one talk therapy. You're in a room by yourself, no distraction, no noise. One-on-one? Yeah. So like this? Yeah. But and in Scientology, they have what's called an emeter.

All right. Almost all auditing employs the use of an emitter. What's an emitter? So an emitter is a device that just measures the resistance to a small electrical flow, except Scientologists believe that this emitter can be used to simply direct the progress of an auditing session to determine whether the auditing has reached a good satisfactory conclusion.

All auditing sessions have to end on a satisfactory conclusion. Like, that's the job of the auditor. You don't just, it's not like, sorry, the session sucked. See you next week. It's not like that. Every auditing session has to end on a positive note. And if it doesn't, there's corrections to be made. So the emitter, what does it look like visually? Oh, you can pull it up. Pull up Mark 8, emitter Mark 8. So there's a few dials, you know, there's a basic information about time, duration of presuming that a dial that just goes zero to something. Okay, so let's say that the meter's in front of me and you're the one holding the cans.

I'm holding the cans, you're doing the auditing of me. Yeah, okay. I'm holding the cans. No, literally, in the beginning of an auditing session, when you're calibrating the sensitivity of the emitter, you do a can squeeze. So I go squeeze the cans, please. Okay, so I'm just squeezing the cans. And I'm just changing the sensitivity. Because when you squeeze the cans,

I want to get about a one-third of a dial drop on the needle. The idea is you don't want, if the needle's too sensitive, then every time you shift around in your chair, the needle's gonna bounce all over the place. So you're trying to set the sensitivity to this thing. And that's all the knob there on the bottom to the left. That's the sensitivity knob.

And that determines just how sensitive the needle is going to be. And the bigger dial is called the tone arm, and that is changing. I want to say voltage or current, but I'm not intent. I'm going to get one of those words is wrong, right? But it is a real device. It's a real device. You can actually calibrate to probably get an outcome that you want. Yeah, so here's even how just

to have a Scientology Auditor believes it works. You're holding the cans, there's a tiny little battery in that emitter that's sending, you're completing the circuit when you pick up the cans, right? So you got a little thing going there. And that needle will respond to your physical movement, but that's not what we want.

We want you to sit the hell still so that we can read this thing when I'm asking you questions. Okay. So you're sitting there still, very still. As still as you can, comfortable, right? And I'm gonna go, is there's something you're withholding from me? And what I'm looking for is right when I say,

at the end of May, I'm looking for the needle to dip to the right. Having a needle, even if it's kind of random, can really be like a catalyst for conversation. That's what it's used for, except it's an enforced conversation. So I'll give you a really good example of this. So you're holding the cans,

say is there anything you're withholding from me? And I get an instant read, and I go, is there anything you're withholding from me? You're gonna go, I don't think so. And I don't see the needle. No, you don't see the needle. I go, well, what did you think of when I asked you the question? Now, if you've already had a lot of auditing, you know how this goes.

It means I got an instant read and we're not going to move on until this question gets resolved. Okay, so you're going to go, I don't know what else is thinking of. And then I'm going to be like, you know, take a look and I'll help you out here. I'll try to steer you. Okay, so I'm looking to get roughly the you know, take a look and I'll help you out here. I'll try to steer you. Okay. So I'm looking to get roughly the same read while you're thinking about whatever. I mean, what was that? What was that right there?

And you couldn't start digging to what you can start. I just want an answer to the question. Okay. And I can go to memory. Yeah. And you can give me any answer you want. There's no way for me to know if you're giving me the right answer, but I want you to give me something. Yeah.

If you say you can't give me anything, I'm going to keep using the emitter until you give me something. Okay, so let's say you give me something. I'm going to get all the details about that. And until like time, place, form, and event, I want to know everything that happened to want to know all the details. And by the way, I'm writing all this down. So I'm taking notes of everything you're telling me that it's a bad thing that you did

that you haven't told me about. Okay, so I'm keeping notes. When you represent to me that you've told me everything there is to tell, I'm looking for the needle to give like a smooth, back and forth motion like this. And Scientology calls that a floating needle. That means in Scientology land, we're done with that.

So now I might go back to check the question. Okay, good, I'll check the question again. Is there anything you're withholding from me? Ooh, if I get another read, we gotta go through the process again. Okay, if. I'll check the question again. Is there anything you're withholding from me? Oh, if I get another read, we've got to go through the process again. Okay. If you tell me, I've told you everything and I don't get a floating needle. I've got to go, okay, is there an earlier, similar thing? Have you basically done an earlier, similar thing?

Is there an earlier, similar time you haven't told someone something or is there an earlier , similar thing that you did, the thing that you just told me? We're going to keep going earlier, similar earlier similar, earlier similar, until I get a floating needle. That's where I'm explaining it this way, you can see how no matter what the specific auditing session happens to be about, there's still the potential in any auditing session that you're going into past lives, just because you have to go earlier similar until you get a floating needle.

Okay. Now, here's how scientists think the emitter actually works. We're meaning why does the emitter work? So we talked before about these mental pictures, right, these recordings. Okay. Well, we spoke about N grams, just recordings of pain and unconsciousness. Well, Scientology would hold the bad recordings aren't the only recordings that you have.

Those are just the recordings in your reactive mind. You also have an analytical mind, which is just your conscious memory, conscious recording of everything from present time to the last 76 trillion years. And Hubbard would say that these memories are actually a perfectly detailed recording. And these are like 56 perceptions or something. And that is perfect. And you can access that information. You just have trouble doing so. Okay.

So he says that these recordings, these mental pictures, have actual electrical charge and mass. Now you asked before, is there any actual physics in this? I don't know, where are you supposed to store the pictures of your last 76 trillion years that have charge and this? I don't know, where are you supposed to store the pictures of your last 76 trillion years that have charging mass? I don't see it, but Hubbard says it's there. Okay.

So he says that these things have mass and when you recall them or put attention on them, you create an electrical flow, which maybe through magnetic fields or whatever, impinges upon the electrical flow of the emitter, and it shows up as a read on the needle. That's how Scientologists believe that's why the needle reads. Now, Sinek's would say the needle only reads on palm sweat and movement.

Well, I know that's not true. I can't tell you everything the needle does read on, but I can tell you it's not just moving your hands and sweaty hands. It does correlate to thoughts, probably. Some ways somehow. Because if it didn't correlate to thoughts, that this process would be way too inefficient. Because it would be too... There's going to be a bunch of people who are just not...

You're not going to get the, what is it called, the floating needle, like no matter what. I can't explain to you how you get a floating needle, but it sure as hell isn't hand sweat and it sure as hell isn't squeezing the cans. Right. So you eventually, most people will get to the floating needle and some, you get floating needles. There's like a feed, there probably is a feedback mechanism that you will each person realizes how their mind and body, yeah, because you want a

resolution, right? It's probably you want your needle flow for both people. Yes. And it's probably a great experience when you're like, yes, it's a gamified feeling, right? Well, when you're training on how to use the emitter, there are drills where you practice generating with your mind various needle reactions. So, you know, there is a drill where you sit there and you consciously try to create a floating needle by recalling happy thoughts. Go to your happy place. And at the end of every auditing session, you actually have to go to a third party, sit down in front of an emitter and verify that your needle's floating.

Every single auditing session not only has to end on a floating needle, but then you have to go to someone else and have the floating needle verified. Any Scientologist who's a seasoned recipient of auditing knows how to make their needle float at the examiner. But I gotta be honest though, this process again, sorry to be sort of going there, but it feels like this is a very rigorous talk therapy session. Is there good aspects to this? Sure. A lot of people find auditing very helpful. I mean, I've heard some describe it as quite thoroughly addictive.

Me personally, I never enjoyed getting auditing. That's probably more a function of having been raised in it. And it was never something I wanted to do. Something that was forced on me as a child. And also, I was never talking I wanted to do. Something was forced on me as a child. And also, I was never, I don't like talking about private, secret stuff. Like you kind of, you kind of have to want to be an open book to honestly and thoroughly participate

in an auditing session. Because there's not necessarily a belief that this is gonna be private. There's no expectation of privacy, but there's no expectation that your stuff's gonna be leaked from blackmail either. I mean, you kind of... You trust the people in the organization, even despite rumors and stuff like that, but

the rumors are coming from people that are lying to you essentially. If you're a Scientologist and you're participating in an auditing session, you know that any one in the organization has the ability to know the stuff that you saw. It's not like, oh my God, I'm only telling my autodix, I think no one's ever going to know. You know that people know, but you also trust the organization. How quickly does it go to past memories? For people who are seasoned, like they actually like going past life. I hated it. I would make sure, I was really good at making my needle float.

I didn't want to have some auditor because I never believed in the past life memories. So I didn't want to be in that impassable, you know, reaching impassant and auditing session where I was being asked for something I couldn't provide, because I knew this auditing session has to end on a good point. But Scientologists enjoy, for the most part, going, they call it whole track. Whole track is past life. Going whole track. Your time track, they call it the time track, is your whole memory, but whole track refers to anything past life.

Okay. So going whole track or deep whole track with high reality, meaning it's not like, oh, I have a fuzzy memory and I'm not sure if it's real, like your real season Scientologists are like, oh, yeah, I was on this planet and this time circling this. Before I was eating for breakfast, fascinating. before the origin of life on earth Mm-hmm. So wait so billions of years ago on a distant planet where you were eating for breakfast or other universes I wonder if this is a nice shortcut To sneak up to actual trauma that happened to you as a therapy device I just so putting Scientology aside. I'm thinking about as a technique for therapy, discussing

basically, you know, some people have trauma and one of the things you do with therapy is like bringing the trauma to the surface, that's stuff that happens to your childhood. Maybe it's a more convenient thing to do to kind of map that indirectly onto a fictitious telling of what happened to you, something like that trauma on a distant planet elsewhere. Could be a nice way to sneak up to it. Yeah. And it goes both flows there, not just things that have happened to you,

but things that you've done. So, you know, you could be being asked for, you know. You'd be going back to, I wiped out a civilization. I committed genocide, I don't know. This rights on this planet. Oh wow. Oh yeah. So you can actually take on a whole new guilt. Oh yeah. So, uh, okay. All right. You

might actually take on a lot more guilt than I go off. Because if you feel like that self-critical aspect of the brain, boy, because my brain is really self-critical. So I could see myself manufacturing. If I was forced to over time. Some kind of story where I didn't genocide a whole population of like Pluto or something at a distant, is somewhere in office in Tari. Yeah, so I mean, you know, I walk around with like, you know, way, I'm actually a horrible person.

So imagine though, if you had not only are you looking at, you know, if someone's being self-critical, trying to identify destructive patterns of behavior in your present life, but what if you really internalize the fact that I haven't only been this way for 40 years. I've been this way for 40 trillion years. But Scientology would argue that as a Thayton, you're inherently good. All Thayons are basically good. So the goal of the auditing procedure there would be essentially to figure out find the moment, find what it was that caused you to make that shift as a being to dramatize, you know, evil intentions and stuff like that. So even if you're going whole track

looking at all the horrible things you've done, the goal is to find like, well, what happened just prior to that? What was like the prior confusion? And what did you misunderstand just before that and whatnot? So the goal is basically, so Scientologists, after a lot of auditing, are also convinced that they have fixed the reason for any non-optimum conduct.

And underlying this is a belief that at the core, we're all good. Yes. There's a lot of really powerful ideas in Scientology, which is so interesting that it goes wrong. Yeah. Okay. What about the training you mentioned, the training of the auditor? That's really interesting. So what's how lengthy is that process?

It can take years. I mean, one of that question I want to ask is are people in seorg like as an auditor, do you believe everything? How much is there a crisis of faith that creeps in? Religion you have a crisis of faith when you start to wonder like this God even exists. So in this case, how often do you start to doubt that some of the core beliefs of Scientology are false? to doubt that some of the core beliefs of Scientology are false. Scientology would say that Scientology is not about beliefs. It's about application of the techniques of Scientology auditing to improve someone's spiritual awareness and ability.

So the belief level of Scientology is pretty much the stuff we've already discussed. The effectiveness of the auditing process. So the effectiveness of the auditing process is one of the things Hubbard says is that standard tech, the technology they call the tech, the technology of how to deliver auditing, standard tech, works 100% of the time when applied 100% correctly. That's kind of unfalseifiable, right? Because anytime it doesn't work, it wasn't applied correctly. Exactly. That's a nice little escape hatch, it wasn't applied correctly. Exactly. That's a nice little escape hatch to pull on having a crisis of faith.

It didn't work. Then obviously, it wasn't applied correctly. That's where quality control comes in. Their job is to nitpick. And you can always find one thing that wasn't done correctly. Communism didn't work because it wasn't implemented correctly. It's always it's always it's always an escape hatch with ideologies. That's right. That's right. I would probably argue that auditors are not in a position of having many crisis of faith because

actually they're usually seeing people for the most part improve in some ways through the process of auditing. Now, auditing can create like a state somewhat of a euphoric state. You feel great. You're just blown out of your head. You know, you feel on top of the world. I've had that in some of my auditing. As an auditor, sorry, no, as a person receiving auditing. And so my point is as an auditor doing a lot of auditing, you know, you're going to have someone in front of you called the the pre-clear is the person in front of you who's getting the auditing called the PC of the pre-clear.

They see over and over and over again, these PCs having these sort of euphoric states and floating needles and I feel great and fantastic. No, thanks. You saved my life and da da da da da da. I've always said, if people didn't find Scientology helpful, nobody would ever stay in Scientology. And so auditors are pretty much the ones doing the heavy lifting of what it even means to be a Scientologist. Those guys aren't the ones that you end up having crisis of faith.

I mean, doing Scientology auditing, it doesn't require that you believe, just have faith that you believe something. You just have to go through these motions. And Scientologists, one of the reasons Scientologists think this is all, is because it's like, I don't care if you believe why this works. I care how you feel at the end of an auditing session. And in paragraph speaking, like anecdotal data is,

it actually seems to improve people's lives within the context. So taking the outside world out of it, within this particular organization, you're actually measurably seeing improvement. Yes. Is that some degree of real? Because if you look at a book like Animal Farm, where the pigs start to rule the other

animals, and over time, the life of the animals gets worse and worse and worse, while the pigs keep saying that it's actually getting better and better and better. Again, communism is the same thing. The rationing is getting worse and worse and worse and less and less food, but there's constant reporting that there's more and more food. We're winning, hashtag. I would argue that what you've just described could be an identical description of what it feels like and what it means to go up Scientology's branch of total freedom. You are reinforcing to yourself that everything's getting better and better and better, and

you'd be like, you don't spend time with your family anymore, you're broke even though you make a lot of money, you're always stressed, you're at the back and call of these people who seem to run your lives. How a Scientologist feels about their own life is, it's very interesting to compare that to how that person's life looks to their non-Scientology family members. I get contacted by a lot of people who've never been in Scientology,

but like, I got a family member who's really deep and I just, can you help me understand some things? Why is this person's life like this? Why is this person's life like this? So, I don't want to say that scientists do not actually, I don't want to say, oh, it's all on their heads, they think they're being helped, but they're really not. That doesn't feel honest, you know. But it's this thing where if Scientology was just getting auditing, when you wanted just getting auditing when you wanted

about the subjects you wanted and you could take it or leave it, that would be fine. It's the fact that it's part and parcel to this entire organization and this entire experience that has, as a part of that experience, taking everything from you, demanding everything from you, controlling who you can speak with, controlling who you can have relationships with, who you have to erase from your life. This is where, and it's hard to place one pin point on, this is where Scientology goes wrong. It's really hard to do that, because the good parts of Scientology and the bad parts of Scientology are all just Scientology. Yeah, so there's definition was bad for you and it's probably in the beginning is bad for you. This almost just sounds like a template of a toxic relationship.

You know, there's a bunch of stuff in this world that's just not good for you. So the authoritarian says like, I'm just protecting you by blocking you off from those negative things and they're probably negative they are probably negative things, but then this like This freedom starts closing in to where you can't no longer speak freely think freely act freely and there's some I mean, that's why I sort of power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely that person doing the controlling actually starts getting that dopamine rush of the controller that's exciting.

It's a vicious negative cycle. So you start out, it starts out good because you're trying to do good for the person, but then it somehow goes to shit. Yeah. So what are the aspects that are often controlled about a person who's in psychology, especially C-Work?

Well, information control access to the internet access to any information critical of Scientology. Is some internet access allowed? Public Scientologists has no restrictions to their access to the internet. They're just not allowed to read anything critical of Scientology.

Oh, okay, so they're supposed to self-control what they read or not. And what's the explanation? Is it always assumed that anything critical of Scientology is a lie? They really push this thing that unless you've been in a Scientology organization yourself, or unless you've actually been a Scientologist, you couldn't possibly know the truth about

Scientology. If you're only getting information from people who aren't members or former members, then you couldn't possibly be getting the correct information. Now, they don't realize the math there doesn't make sense. If you can find out that your information by becoming and being a Scientologist, then that means you can get the correct information from a former Scientologist

because they traveled that path and they got the correct information. So they still create this, they try to create this unfalcifiable loop, where unless you are personally doing it, you don't have correct information. And you go, what about the people who did personally do it? Got the correct information.

Left. And are now sharing that with others. Well, no, those are lies. Well, okay, so just anything you don't like is a lie then. You go, yeah, pretty much, that's kind of how it works. So what about the control of negative information on the internet? What like the actual operations? I've, you know, preparing, I certainly,

I don't know too much about Scientology, I was doing a bunch of reading, and the Wikipedia page on Scientology, interestingly enough, is not that negative about Scientology. So like, it made me ask, you have to be a little bit careful how you consume stuff from Wikipedia. You have to consider because money can buy things there.

There's certain special interests and so on. But like it made me wonder like, with a lot of controversial topics, what is true? And where do I look? Where do I go for truth? So like how much sort of deliberate action is there to control what is true on the internet by Scientology? Well, these days, they've pretty much, I think, thrown in the towel. But the Scientology middle management was editing Wikipedia so often from IP addresses

that were traced back to the Scientology buildings that Wikipedia locked them out from any IP addresses associated with Scientology from being able to edit it. It's like, the Scientology was so infatuated with trying to control the information and in the early days of the internet They had a certain degree of success with that. They just it's just hopeless these days. The scale the scale is not there But actually I'm very surprised how Bought farms how effective that can be at a very small scale if you just pay 100 people just spread narratives But the the the the bad stuff the the reason that's effective is you can kind of create conspiracy theories that create chaos,

and nobody knows what is true, that bot farms can do. But actually, really nicely control a narrative, it's hard. So to create chaos, it's easier to do. To basically say like, you know, do PR control is very hard. Yeah, so especially on the internet, especially when the critical eye is there. The internet's consumable bullshit, which is one of the really, really powerful thing about the internet. And I got to tell you, it's one of the reasons I do my YouTube channel.

It's one of the reasons I decided to upload every day, I've uploaded every day for the last six months. I just wanted there to be a non-stop flow of information, of any kind and any variety, as long as it's fair and balanced, intelligent, interesting that Scientologists who stumble upon the internet will go, oh, look, someone's talking about my thing. Let's see what they got going on. And Anna, I know this guy.

The fact that Scientology crushes so much information, but before YouTube, I have the only big Scientology channel, and that only got big in the last six months. Okay, so before that, there were channels, there was things, but it's almost like, it took a lot of, like people thought like it took a lot of bravery and courage to like say something on the internet about Scientology and so people would pop up and there weren't very many voices and I was like, I want this to be prolific.

I want, I want to be prolific. I want to have 30 or 40 other channels being prolific so that Scientology couldn't possibly successfully control the narrative about it. Have you been personally attacked? Aaron Smith11.com is a website created by the Church of Scientology. Have you seen it? No.

What kind of content is on there? Oh, Aaron's abusive father and a horrible husband and the worst staff member we've ever had. And oh, I openly talk about it because I think the fact that Scientology even does things like that is fucking hilarious. And anything they try to do to me, the way I think about it is you know you're just giving me an opportunity to turn the mirror back on you and show everyone how horrible you are.

Does it stick? No. So you find that there is ineffective. It's completely ineffective. They're so over the top. And while I'll tell you how the website even came into being. So I was on the first season of Learamany Scientology in the aftermath.

Every single person who participated in that show got a website. It's just that everyone else's website is like, whoismarkheadly.com? Whoismicrender.com? Well, I bought who is Aaron Smith 11.com, but I was too stupid to buy Aaron, I didn't buy Aaron Smith 11.com, but I was too stupid to buy Aaron, I didn't buy Aaron Smith 11.com.

So I'm actually the only one who has a website in their name. Oh, nice. Yeah. And I'm like, dot com. And get a lawyer to get it back for me. But I'm like, why? I want everyone to see what a nasty, petty,

disgusting organization that this is, and nobody believes anything Scientology says anyway. Does the general public know that it comes from Scientology It says right on the bottom copyright 2000 whatever Church of Scientology international like they didn't even try to hide it Aaron Smith 11.com. Yeah, a man with no moral compass Erasmith who is he really? Aaron Smith 11 a man with no moral compass Read about Aaron Smithmith 11's and angry

man spreading hate from the internet's shadows. Open mouth shot and you're saying like at the but wow there's there's testimonies. Oh there's videos from former co-workers. The slightest thing just sets him off and he just goes totally nuts. Well that one is true. I didn't understand why he slapped me before the interview. I felt out. I got links to everyone else's website on the bottom. It's so funny.

Cool. Okay. The other one. 2020, I'm sure of Scientology International all rights reserved. Here's an example of just Scientology's complete lack of self-awareness. So me and Mike Render, we went and have these on

like a house flip project, right? You know, we've got Mike Render. You know Mike Render. Do I? You gave me a bobble head of the guy. I don't know him. I was just, I would like to talk to him about him, but this, there's a very fine gentleman here with a bobble head. The reason we create that the bobble head is because on Mike Render's hate site, Scientology

created a Jeff or a GIF, how do you set what's the right way to say it? The correct way is GIF, GIF, good. Scientology created a GIF of Mike Rinder as a Bobblehead. It was an insult like, oh, all he does is sit next to Leah Remdening, go yes, Leah, yes, Leah. And so they made a GIF of him with a Bobblehead. So we were like, we're gonna make Mike Rinder Bobbleheads

and we're gonna sell him on the spshop.com to raise money for the aftermath foundation. I love it. Yeah. And now that I'm out and by. Yeah, go to the likereeshop.com and get yourself a MicRinder Bobblehead. Now look, now that my profile's getting a little higher,

this head was made to Bobble. Like this, smooth, shiny head needs its own Bobblehead now. It does. What does, I can't believe it doesn't exist. So, but let me show you. So here's what's happening here. We just hired some day laborers off of what like Craigslist or something. So what Scientology did was they had a private investigator stake out the House Flip project.

They were clearly running license plates of anyone who visited the property because otherwise otherwise how would they find out the laborers names look Do background checks on them to find out they had criminal records and they publish this as if it's gonna neck reflect negatively on me Yeah, oh we hired someone to do work who had a criminal record who gives it shit Do you know one of the biggest problems people with records have is finding employment? There's nothing bad about hiring someone who's got a criminal record. It doesn't reflect negatively on me, but it shows you what they think about those people.

It shows you what they think about people who are trying to put their lives back together and maybe actually work for a living. And it also shows that they're surveilling us. You're like, they don't realize that putting this up, they're publishing information that they could only have if they're surveilling me and Mike. And it doesn't occur to them, maybe we shouldn't put that up. Just a general process said to say of journalism, where they're looking for any kind of dirt,

and they're trying to conjure up a story, and there's something about drama and negative stories that get clicks and so on. So this is a general process. The more, especially the more celebrity you become, the more these kinds of attacks come. And they look for any kind of thing that could be, you know, it doesn't even have to be facts. It could be just asking who is he really seems to have traction on the internet. Yeah. What is the actual truth of the man you, claiming you are, of the good man you keep

claiming you are, is fascinating. But sometimes it can be effective. But I think if you're being transparent and authentic, you can just put in yourself out there completely and their story completely then that's the best way to fight it. That's the other reason to be prolific on the internet, right? The reason Joe Rogan can't get cancelled is because anyone can watch thousands of hours of the authentic Joe Rogan. You can't misrepresent him because he spent thousands of hours representing himself genuinely. Yeah, the nice thing when you're representing

yourself genuinely, you should be a good person. So if you're a good person then the internet will know. You can smell out the bullshit. Who is David Mascaridge? It's even like, because you said Elrond Haber founded Scientology. Yeah. Let's go to the story of how we transitioned from that to David Mascaridge. The current leader of Scientology. He was actually not selected by Elrond Haber to take over, but ended up usurping power and taking over. It sounds like Stalin and Trotsky. It's a similar story. It's the person oftentimes in a situation.

It's not the natural successor to power. It's the one that takes power. I think the quote sometimes gets attributed to David Miscavich's power is not given it is assumed, yeah, something like that. The last six years of Elrond Hubbard's life, he was often a seclusion, essentially hiding from lawsuits. Now, by the time Hubbard went off into seclusion, Miscavich had sort of already risen up through the ranks of the C organization. Now, Miscavich was like a teenager either like 11, 12, 13 or something like that. Miscavage was not born into Scientology,

but he was a young boy when his father got into Scientology. Okay, so miscavage did start working as a C org member. So there's one organization that existed to essentially serve Hubbard directly and to represent his interest, and that was called the Commodore. He was the Commodore of the C organization. The Commodore's Messengers organization,

we're going to call it the CML. Miscavaged started working for the CML pretty early on in his Ciorg career. By the way, as did Mike Rinder. Many Mike. Okay. And so, he just became known as a doer, like a guy who'll get it done. No excuses, no stops, you know, get it done.

So he had made a name for himself in the CMO around the time, by the time Hubbard were off into seclusion. Now when he went off into seclusion, he took two other CMO, or I'm gonna call him messengers, right, Commodore's messengers. He took two other messengers with him, Pat and Annie Broker.

Now it has been said by people, Mike, Mike Rro's messengers. He took two other messengers with him, Pat and Annie Broker. Now, it has been said by people, Mike, Mike Rinder has told me. He goes, the reason Pat and Annie went off with LRH isn't necessarily because he desperately wanted them to, but partly because we could afford to let them go. We didn't necessarily need them. Okay. And between the two of them,

Annie was the one who was like a really compassionate person, intelligent person, caring person. Was there possible trajectory of this world where she was the one that took over? Yes. In fact, Pat and Annie Broker were the two people that were supposed to take over. Okay. But because Pat and Annie were with Hubbard in seclusion, Mascavitch basically had the complete run of the operation without any oversight from Hubbard, the only way any information would get from Scientology World to Hubbard is Mascavitch and Pat Broker would meet at a confidential location. And Mascavitch would give Broker any information

he wanted to go to LRH. So if Mascavitch wanted to get rid of somebody, all he had to do was feed LRH false information that this person was doing had been caught doing something treasonous. And then he would get in response some order from Elrond Hubbard to get rid of this person having to do. So are there so many similarities between various communist regimes and fascist regimes? Well, here they're the same thing when he became a supreme leader. He had to take power. Yeah, he had to wait for the president to die, but the whole the whole time there's a

control and information and a slow aggregation of power. Of course, with nations is different because if you control the military, you control a lot. So there's you have to also get the generals and your side and so on. But I'm sure in this situation situation there is similar kind of dynamics. You have to get certain people on your side, control the flow of information, let the original founder, the original leader die off. Yeah.

And make sure that you are the one that's left with the power. Right. So whereas patent and year off with LRH, all of Scientology's attorneys and accountants and lobbyists and whatever, they all know Dave. Dave's the one they deal with. So, you know, LRH passes away, Pat and Annie make this appearance. Nobody knows Pat and Annie.

Everybody knows Dave. And so, he ended up getting rid of Pat and Annie. This is a very short, perhaps slightly bastardized version of it of miscavage basically they had been they had been ushering just suitcases of cash To Elrond Hubbard during this time and you know pat like so you have miscavage handing boatloads of cash to Pat broker to Pat Broker. Pat would do crazy things like hide the money in the walls of houses and dig pits and everything. So a miscavage basically threatened to turn Pat Broker over to the IRS for tax evasion. That's Pat Broker is still alive. Is he a Scientologist? No. No. He basically went away and kept out of the hands shut. She died a handful of years ago. She stayed a loyal seerig member until the very end. But literally, like, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but She never, but she never operated with any actual authority. Even though she was supposed to be the one to take over her and Pat. So on David Muscavige, difficult question,

but can you make both the case that he is a good man who's misunderstood and the case that he's not a good man? First of all, I believe that Muscavige is a true believer in Scientology. I do believe that. That's a really important question believer in Scientology. I do believe that. That's a really important question. You think he believes in all the things and all of that? He definitely believes in that. I think he believes in Scientology, but in a different way than all other Scientologists, because he's aware of a lot more information, damaging information about Elvron Hubbard and

the true story of Scientology than most people. So, his version of belief is different. I'll give you one example here. So, Scientology's bridge to total freedom goes up to what they call OTA, the operating thing in level 8. Okay? Scientologists have all been told that Elrond Hubbard, before he passed, finished, completed, putting together OTA 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15.

It's just sitting in the vault, waiting to be released. This is part of the Scientology belief system, because remember, I said, going up Scientology's bridge of total freedom is how you're supposed to get back to your native God-like state. While all the Scientologists in the world who've already done OT 8 know that they haven't gotten there, but they still believe in Scientology

because they're told there's more. But wait, there's more. Miscavage knows there is no more. So Miscavage knows the fundamental promise of being able to achieve full operating Thayton is a lie. He knows Elrond Hubbard didn't accomplish that, so therefore no one else is going to accomplish it as well. If Elrond Hubbard had accomplished it, Mgavage knows he didn't write it up,

he didn't leave instructions for anyone else would accomplish it. So no matter what, misgavage knows that the fundamental promise that what Scientology is saying, they will be able to deliver to mankind is a lie. Now it's going to sound like I'm contradicting myself because it sounds like I'm saying, well, he knows it's bullshit. I think he believes that Elrond Hubbard just failed to finish his work and he's kind of hoping Elrond Hubbard is going to come back to finish the job because Elrond Hubbard did tell the people at international, the international management base, at least a core of them, that he was coming back. Now, we know that David Miscavich believed this because right around the 21 year mark,

he was supposed to come back like 21 years after he died. Right around the 21 year mark, David Miscavich was getting busy putting some things in place that had to get done in case Al-Ran Hubbard came back. So we know he at least believed to that level. Do you believe that like Al-Ranubr could sort of enter his own body? No, that's not how it works in Scientology. Okay, so you can't have a transfer of Satan's.

If you were full OT, you could. Can you describe the OT again? So OT levels, OT 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, to the 8. What are they? What? How do you get to level one? I'm going to answer this question by first connecting some dots. We spoke early in the interview about achieving your native godlike state. That in Scientology is called native state. Native state and full operating Thayton mean the exact same thing. Because at native state, you are a fully operating Thayton. Operating your full capacity.

So, OT means operating Thayton. So, the upper confidential half of Scientology's bridge are called the OT levels, the operating Thayton levels. And these, and remember, they're confidential. So, most Scientologists have not done these levels. They don't know what's on them. It is on these levels that you learn about the Zee-New and the Body Thaithin story. Can you describe Zee-New, please?

We spoke earlier about how at the lower non-confidential levels of Scientology's bridge, Hubbard is saying that what's wrong with you is your reactive mind. Okay. Well, in Scientology, once you've gotten rid of your reactive mind, that is what's called the state of clear.

Okay. So, after you finish state of clear, the next thing on the bridge is the OT levels. Well, if you've already gotten rid of your active mind, what the heck are you supposed to do now? Well, now, Elrond Hubbard says, okay, first, what was wrong with you was just your reactive mind. But now, the next thing you have to resolve, the next thing that's wrong with you, is you actually have tens of thousands of of fattens stuck to your body and they all have their own reactive minds. You have to audit the fattens. How do you audit the fattens? These are like different

shades of your inner mind and you have to try to access them somehow. You use the emulator just like we spoke about except now you've got a divider that separates the can so they don't short circuit and you hold both cans in one hand and you have the emulator in front of you so now you're auditing yourself, you're telepathically talking to the thing and set or stock to you. You are thinking the commands instead of saying them out loud, and you sort of do drills where you practice looking for emitter reads at the instant you have a thought. You're telepathically auditing spirits that Elrond Hubbard says are stuck to your body. Does this sound like a recipe for a mental breakdown?

Or a head-to-the-metal journey. Wherever that leads, it's a complete lead. It probably leads to a very bad place, right? Very often does. And you combine that with the fact that Scientology is against any forms of mental health or health outside of Scientology, and you have a recipe for disaster. Now, you might go, where did all these spirits come from that are stuck to your body? This is where Xenu comes into play. So Hubbard says that 75 million years ago, Xenu was basically a dictator at,

the Galactic Confederation is like 70 something or 80 something planets that's somewhere in the Milky Way and Xenu was like a dictator and overlord for either one of these planets or the whole system, and they had a population problem. And Zeno was like, we need to get rid of like half the people. So we called them all in for tax audits. I'll remember it didn't like the IRS.

So of course the story has to do with tax audits. Okay, called them all in for tax audits, said, psych bitches, froze them in glycol, loaded them up on space planes, flew them to earth. Remember, the story has to be earth because the story is what's wrong with us. Flue them to earth, drop them in volcanoes, blew them up with hydrogen bombs, and then captured them with like spirit magnets, some making upwards because okay. And these disembodied spirits of these people that got blown up have just been blown in the wind here on earth and they attach themselves to things and they can be in the environment and they stick to bodies and everything. And so and they all have reactive minds. So at Scientology's upper levels, if you get sick or you have cancer or there's something wrong with you, Scientology will say, that's one of your body things.

You need to get some auditing to fix the body things. So this story, you do it with a kind of bit of a chuckle. But when done seriously, so it's just told in a serious way, like to, like, or written down. It's when you read it. By most accounts, Scientologyologists struggle when they read this for the first time because this is not consistent with what Scientologists are hoping for

is on the RT levels. They're hoping for some real life-changing magic. The way these things are described and sold there. Remember, they're hoping that these RT levels are gonna make them give them the ability to go like completely independent of their body at will. Extirize from your body, go back into your body, to make them give them the ability to go completely independent of their body at will. Yeah. Extirize from your body, go back into your body, you know, like I have some real spirit

powers. So first is kind of a shock. This is, but then you still probably believe you hope. Yeah. And you might be my turn on yourself, self-critical that this is I'm just not strong enough yet. Yeah. Because also part of the scientific, remember it works 100% of the time when used 100% correctly. And if it doesn't, it could be because something's not being done,

right, but it also could be because you're doing bad things that you're not telling people about. Like if you're committing present time over its crimes, sins, Scientologists would be like, that's part of the reason auditing isn't working on you is because you're committing criminal behavior That you're not being honest about. So every Scientologist is sort of incentivized to to make auditing work on them Okay, now Lex this work is a little crazy on OT3 you learn about the OT the body things for the first time When you finish OT3 you attest to having achieved the state of having no more body things and the first time. When you finish OT3, you attest to having achieved the state of having no more body things.

And then you start OT4 and he's like, Psych, you got more, you got more BTs, except those other BTs, they had drug problems and that's why you couldn't find them the first time. So we're gonna do a little something little different here, just something little different there. Gotta get rid of these BTs that were addicted to drugs, okay? Then you finish OT4 and you're thinking, man, I hope you get to the good stuff soon.

And then you get to OT5 and he's like, psych! You got more BT's! You couldn't find these BT's because they were all bunched up together in clusters. And first you have to break up the clusters and then you can get rid of the BT's and you're like, okay, gotta do that. And this was all Elrond Hubbard approved. Yeah, this is from Elrond Hubbard approved. Yeah, this is from Elrond Hubbard. And then after you finish OT5,

you get rid of all the BT clusters. OT6 is just a training course to teach how to auto OT7. Well, OT7 is now more BT's except it's in the environment. Stuff, you're trying to locate BT's, you can find them on your body, but it's just more BT's. Okay, and then OT8 is, remember we talked about in all these auditing sessions throughout the entire Scientology Bridge,

you have people who've run hundreds or thousands of past life, whole track incidents. These memories have become part of their self identity of who they even think they are. OT8, you go through all these past life recalls and essentially I'm oversimplifying this a little bit. He goes, psych! All those past life memories weren't yours.

They were your BTs. And he goes, now that you've discovered this, now you know who you are not. And you are ready to find out who you really are. Well, now you're supposed to find out who you really are on OT9 and 10. Those don't exist. Do we know they don't exist? Yes. In fact, the whole story of how that became known

is part of how David Miscavich was able to get rid of Pat Broker and take over power because it was believed that Pat Broker had been, was in possession of the upper unreleased OT levels. And when Mascavage determined that he was not, and there weren't in fact any levels, that was bad, that was a bad day to be David Mascavage, because he now knew he had something on his hands he could not get himself out of. He's like, oh, so there's no gap for faith to seepin that there is a level 9 and 10, 11 and 12. Oh, the faith is there.

Scientologists believe that these things do exist. Yeah. Well, Robert Dentley van nothing behind. Does David miscavaged believe they exist? Oh, no, he knows they don't exist. No, but when I say exist, oh, I don't mean do advanced levels of spiritual awareness exist. When I said is it, I mean, did L. Ron Hubbard write down what anyone is supposed to do? That's called OT9. That doesn't exist.

So you're seeing David and Ms. Gavish believes that they can be written down, so they exist sort of in a platonic sense. And Elvarn Hubbard is the only one that can write it down. So his face is really deep. Oh, you mean his faith that only Elvarn Hubbard could have only one that can write it down. So his face is really deep. Oh, you mean his face that only Elvarn Hobbert could have ever been the one to do it? The full principles, beliefs of Scientology, he is, do you have a show, he believes? That what exactly?

Everything about Scientology, that is true. To the best of my ability to know that, I believe it to be true. Like, I'll give you a small, even even stupid examples. Like Mike Renders told a story where at the international base, Miscavich actually had like a copper contraption built into the ground, like ground it into the ground, to come out where you could hold it. And here's something he sort of came up with to your BT, it could ground your BTs, could get your BTs that if you were feeling overstimulated or something, he sort of came up with to your BT, it could ground your BTs, could get your BTs that if you were feeling overstimulated or something,

I'm probably slightly bastardizing this story. But he came up with this as a great idea, something to help someone de-stimulate if their BTs were getting a little too overactive use. Now, so that's a stupid story that's sort of like, well, it shows you, he believes in the concept of BTs of his creating little rods to get rid of them to ground them into the earth. Well, he could be he believes in the concept of BT's of his creating little rods to get rid of them to ground them into the earth.

Well, he could be conjuring up the stories because he understands the power of myth and narrative and so on to, uh, to inspire. Sure. But like, but also if we look at history, both with this interesting thing because I've been reading a lot about Hitler and Stalin. And it seems like both of them, in different ways, believed in the stories they were telling. Even when the stories, this is the fascinating, especially with Hitler and propaganda, were they were literally conjured up at first. But then you start to believe you're in propaganda. With Stalin, I think what he always believed is the bigger idea of pure communism and anything

justifies the journey to communism because it will ultimately be good for humanity to achieve the state of pure communism. And then he's a godlike figure that can bring humanity there. But like, Hitler is interesting because like this constant propaganda that he knows is not true. A little bit, there's got to be doubt. But then he like, all doctors removed very quickly. Yeah. So I guess humans are just, this is how they operate. Yeah. The conversation about David Misgavitch gets really interesting because I could give you a, if I wanted to make the argument that he didn't believe, I could give you a dozen examples to make that argument. I just happen to think that he believes in a different way,

whereas your average Scientologist believes that Alvarun Hubbard was practically infallible, that he thought of everything in advance, he took care of everything before he left, and miscavaged still believes in the main structure of this thing, but he's like, oh shit, it's falling to me to figure out how to actually make this thing happen. I think miscavage sees himself as someone who has to a certain degree had to go back and fix all run Hubbard's mistakes. Do you think he sees himself as doing good for the world? I do.

What about for the people of Scientology? I think in his own way he does. I don't think he wakes up thinking he's screwing Scientologists. I think he sees everyone else is screwing him. I think he sees that it is his job to expand Scientology throughout the world and accomplish the aims of Scientology. And he sees that it's not happening.

And he thinks if everyone else would just stop, if everyone else would get out of his way and stop creating problems for him, it would happen. Like, I do think he sees himself as someone who is doing good. I think that's fair to say. I think the evidence shows that. What about the effects of clearly power and influence that he's had and money?

Yeah, without question that is served as a corrupting force. It has. Without question. Have you seen sort of evidence of that that he's changed over time? After the 1993 IRS exemption, that Scientology won back, and this information comes from Mike Rinder. that Scientology One Back and this information comes from Mike Rinder. That's when David Miscavich, as soon as the checks on his power were removed, Miscavich's behavior changed markedly.

Can you tell the story of Shelley Miscavich and the mystery surrounding her? I saw that there is quite a bit of mystery. Yeah. So Shelley Miscavich for many, held the job of her post in the C organization was David Miscavich's assistant. That was her post. It's important to truly understand that and what that means because the fact that she was Miscavich's wife is meaningless. And this is something that's hard to, for regular people in the regular world,

to truly grasp how meaningless it is in Scientology. For C.R.G. members who are spouses, it means nothing. Your role matters more within C.W.R.G. Your role is the only thing that matters. So, let's say, let's say if Shelley was married to Dave, but she worked in a different organization. She would never be seen with him ever, publicly ever, wouldn't travel with him, wouldn't go to events with him, nothing. Sometime around 2006, 2007, and I'm very oversimplifying this, okay.

Shelly basically pissed off Dave to the point where he's like, okay, I'm done with you. I'm gonna take you off of your post, Okay. At that point, she was reassigned to another confidential Scientology base up in Twin Peaks, California. Why am I, the reason I'm providing this type of detail is because we hear that Shelley's missing. Okay. Well, you realize the same people who report that Shelley's missing are also the same people who will tell you exactly where she is Okay, she works at this secretive CST Church of Spiritual Technology based out in Twin Peaks, California

I have personal confirmation that she was seen and spoken with by someone who knew her well in I'll say 2019 Shelley misgavage is missing in the sense that she hasn't been seen with David Miskavitch since about 2006. But because she's no longer his assistant, you would never see her with him. As opposed to the mystery of a person that might be murdered, this is more of reallocation within the organization.

Certain people who cover Scientology, who have published stories, where Shelley's miscavages family member told a story to another family member who told the story to a friend, who told the story to a former Scientologist, who told the story to a journalist, who published the story,

has created the impression that some of Shelley Muscavich's family members are actually talking to the press, when in fact that has never occurred. And so the very people who are publishing about Shelley Muscavich missing have contributed to the fact that Shelley Muscavich does no longer speak to those family members because she thinks they're talking to the press when they never have. It's pretty messed up. It's sad that she, because those those family members, what would be a way for her to to recover to to flourish as a human being to escape. Yeah. So I believe the information that I have that I've verified, I'm putting out in from,

I'm the one representing it's true without revealing my sources. That Shelley was still actively in touch regularly with family members outside of the sea organization since about until about 2014 So I mean regularly, okay, so there's no question about her safety or during that period and then someone else who knew Shelley very well Did see her and actually have a conversation with her in a public place in 2019 or 2020. Not somebody could still come along and be like, how do we know she's okay? It's been three years.

You know, you can say that about anybody. The nature of working in the highest levels of Scientology management at these super secretive bases, it's a very weird and unique situation. It has isolation baked in. How secrecy enforced? Why is secrecy, why is everybody holding on to their stories so hard, so so intensely? People that are within the organization. Like it's hard to leak information. Oh, they wouldn't want to leak. They're true believers. They see, they see like there's sort of a conspiracy theory that runs right through all of Scientology,

which is that Scientology represents like an existential threat to the powers that really control, that really control this planet. Do they have a face to the powers that are really controlled? Do they have names to it? Like who's controlling? It's Zeno's homies. Well, I'm sure that's not what they say Zino

embodied it's actually sort of a multi-faceted Conspiracy in that on the one hand I'll run Hubbard points his fingers that like the international bankers Okay, which has shades of anti-semitism to yeah, and then their IRS is someone was going to be quickly baked in or no The the IRS now the the IRS is so low on the totem pole Oh as far as the I mean the international bankers he would save runs everything got it But they but used that that these bankers also use big pharma and big psych To control the population and Scientology is famously against Pharma and psych and so this is sort of how Elvron Hubbard characterizes

like this big war between Scientology that's trying to set everyone free and big pharma and big psych that's trying to enslave everyone on the planet. Yeah, controlling their mind, controlling their body through chemicals and who controls the press, big pharma and big psych. So there's a lot of correlation to other kinds

of conspiracy theories. Yeah. Oh, that's fascinating. But you asked a question, where why would all these people hold onto their stories? They would never want to leak. Like, by even anyone who would want to leak, would not even want to be a Scientologist anymore.

Like, if you truly believe in Scientology and you got your shoulder to the wheel and you're a C-EARC member, you think Scientology is literally the only thing that can save every being on this planet from a fate of eternal amnesia and slavery, right? And so it's like, I mean, you've seen the Matrix, right? So you've got everyone, once you're unplugged from the matrix and you realized, yeah,

you can get plugged back in and live your nice life, but you're a slave. That's how Scientologists see this planet. They actually, they refer to Earth as a prison planet. Just an individual level, how is it possible to reach a person like that? Is there something you could say to that? Like, what's the journey of reaching a person like that? I personally, because when I was in those shoes, I say there's nothing anybody could have said to me to get me to change how I felt and thought about Scientology. It's almost foolproof that the more evidence you try to present that there's something wrong

with what Scientology is doing, the more you're just working for the psychs. You know, it's very, very difficult. I mean, most people who leave Scientology leave because they have had some personal experience that was just such a grave injustice that it just pushed them beyond the point of what they were willing to experience. I'm not sure I've really ever heard a story of someone going, yeah, I just woke up, I just gradually realized it was all BS and drifted away.

It's usually like, no, I really believed and they treated me so horribly. I almost had no choice but to leave. And then the story's got pretty crazy. Meaning, you don't care what's true anymore. You just have to leave with the unpleasant feeling, the suffering. Yeah. And this sort of goes back to the conversation we're having about, like, well, does miscavage

really believe? And I said, I could make an argument for the fact that he doesn't, right? Because I go, it wouldn't be that hard to change the way Scientology treats people just a little bit. And you'd probably stop losing anyone. Because Scientologists already believe to such a strong degree, you have to be pretty frickin horrible to people to make them leave. And that's where you go, well, does miscavage even want Scientology to expand? Because if he was really being clever about it, it seems like he could at least stop the bleeding, and yet he doesn't. So that's where you make the argument, well, if he doesn't, then he must not want to. So his mind is corrupted to the point where he's not able to actually be a good businessman essentially.

It seems that way. The numbers of Scientologists have been going down and down and down since the early 90s. Is there a good, it's very difficult to get to this number, but is there a good estimate of what the current number of Scientologists or practicing Scientologists is? Oh yeah, I did have a video about this. It's actually quite easy to get to the number.

It's not more than 35,000 in the entire world. And that's being very generous and charitable. That's, I was intentionally generous. I broke it all down on a spreadsheet and everything. What can you give like some insights of how you get that information? Sure, there's about 175 to 200 Scientology organizations in the world. Anybody who's ever worked at these organizations know there's not more than 35 to 50 staff members per org. There's not more than one to 200 public Scientologists per org. I broke down the number of CR members who'd be working at every contential management unit, middle management, International management. I broke it on the mission network, and I was generous.

I mean, my numbers were like, if Elron Hubbard came back and they were doing an event, Elron Hubbard was coming back and announcing OT9 and 10. How many Scientologists could we scrape together in every city to come to this event? It wasn't more than 35,000. Now contrast that to what Scientology says. Millions, 10 million people. Is this less people than there used to be?

Yeah, at its peak it was about 100,000 active members, but never the millions. Never. No. Has David Muscavige used violence? Has there, in your understanding of a in your estimation, sort of harassment, assault, and actual, I don't know how to define assault, but violence? Oh, yeah. Assault and actual, I don't know how to define assault, but violence. Oh, yeah.

Dozens of former Sierra members from the international base have told stories of being assaulted by miscavage. In fact, Mike Rinder is probably the one person who's been assaulted by miscavage more than anyone else. He's personally probably been assaulted dozens of times. Who is Mike Rinder? Someone here. He's one of the highest ranking executives in

Scientology. He was author. There you go, a billion years. A billion years. It's, it really is a fantastic book. Cause like the guy, the guy was born and raised in Scientology and worked personally with Elrond Hubbard and worked personally with David and his college for decades. Like, it doesn't get much more insider than that. I candid and deeply felt my more of a life lost to false belief and courageously regained. Lawrence, right. A billion years might escape from a life in the highest ranks of Scientology in my grander. It's a fantastic book. He also narrates his own audiobook too. I know you like the audiobooks. That's how I listen to him. Yeah. So Mike, famously, you know, I just said him

a moment ago, like someone who's treated so horribly, even though he still believed in Scientology, he had no choice but to leave. And he tells the story in that book, and he still believed in Scientology for years after he escaped, for years. Because there's this thing called

the independent Scientology movement or the free zone or whatever. There are people who do Scientology outside of the Church of Scientology. There's just not many of them. But Mike was one of those people who has actually doing Scientology even after he left. Now, he no longer believes in that anymore

and he doesn't do it. But even though he still believed, even though everything he knew was what he was leaving behind, he still had to leave it behind. And by the way, I just opened to random page and he says, when I signed on for C. Oregon, Adelaide in 1973, the recruiter promised I would train as a Scientology executive under the direct tutelage of Hubbard on the Apollo.

So this is another thing I should probably ask you about this. Oh, we could go for days. I was also told that after I learned all I needed to learn at the foot of the master, I would return to Australia to help expand Scientology in my home country. So, what was the thing that really broke him? The final thing is when he got to a point where he was no longer being forced to lie to protect, I'll run Hubbard, he was now being forced to lie to protect David Misgavitch. And specifically, it was about the allegations

of having been assaulted by Misgavitch. Mike Rinder was at some event, I might have been a grand opening for a building, a Scientology Building in London, and I believe it was John Swini, at that time a BBC journalist, who stuck a camera in my microphone in my face.

Is it true, David and Miscavage are sold? Is it true? And Mike denied it on camera. And then turned around into himself as like, this is what my life has been reduced to. Lying to protect David Miscavage, this used to be about Elrond Haubberg. This used to be about Scientology. Nowbard. This used to be about Scientology. Now it's about protecting this douchebag. And miscavage had just issued orders that was going to send Mike off to Australia.

Like miscavage is sadistic. That is without question. So just like meaning he enjoys inflicting pain upon others. So he very specifically was going to tell Mike, tell Render, or tell that cocksucker, we're shipping him off to Australia. He's never going to see his wife and his kids again, essentially. And that's when Mike was like, they were the only reason I hadn't already left. So if I follow the orders, I'm going to lose them. If I leave Scientology, I'm going to lose him. At least at least Scientology, I'll be free of something.

It's fucking sad. And he still believed Scientology to some degree after he left, is what you're saying. Has he spoken about what it took to let go of believing in Scientology? Yeah. He does a very good job talking about all of this in the book. And it took him, it took him like four or five years to get that book done. Like it's a, it's a polished version, it's a polished version of his story. And, and, and I think Mike's about getting ready to start his own YouTube channel. So that'll be a lot of fun. Actually,

Mike comes on my channel all the time. Yeah. You guys, you guys do a thing together, right? Yeah. We do have three amigos with me and Mike Rinder and Mark Hadley. That's why I gave you Mark's book. I thought maybe you would know him from our little three amigos or Mondays with Mike and Mark videos. Mark Hadley, blown for good behind the anchored in the Scientology. So he escaped from the international base on a motorcycle. It's a wild story.

I won't even try to do it justice. It's a wild story. Nice. I won't even try to do it justice. Who's a better writer of the two of them? You're not going to get me there. I'm trying to be investigative journalist for once. Mike and Mark are both on the board of the aftermath foundation with me. Yeah. Who's better looking now?

It's one of my justifications for just putting up content every day is every video is just an excuse to, in some little way promote the aftermath foundation. And I do that again, one, to genuinely help people escape, and two, because I know it drives David Miscavage crazy. If you look in your own heart, is there anger there? I don't think it's anger. I don't hate, I don't hate Scientology. I don't hate David Miscavage. I don't even hate my experience in Scientology. Do you able to accept the good from your experience?

Yeah, absolutely. But it's also the only path that I traveled. So I tend, okay, little less of these days, but earlier in life, I tended to attribute all my positive characteristics in me to Scientology, because in my simplistic way of thinking, I was like, what else could it possibly be attributed to? That's a very black and white way of seeing. That's a beautiful way to see life. No matter what happens to you,

you attribute like you focus on the positive. Yeah. And sometimes people have traumatic experiences with parents and so on. Yeah. And if you focus on the positive, it's a good way to let go of the trauma associated with it. True. But like another example, I think I'll go to school, like, I stop going

to school in the seventh grade, but people go, but you sound so smart. And what am I supposed to do? I'm not supposed to say, well, that's because of Scientology. Like, how do I answer that question? If it's the only path I traveled, how do I answer that question? I don't necessarily want to give Scientology credit, but what the hell am I supposed to point to? You know, I mean, you said there's, you kind of enjoy, I mean, part of it is you're joking and trolling that you enjoy knowing that your YouTube channel drives Dave and miscavaged crazy. I mean, what? That means you still, I mean, there is a joy you have. There is a joy. I'm not gonna deny that. I don't know what to make of that. Cause there's a, I suppose there's an intimacy

when you're part of a tribe of that kind. It's almost like, let me try to, let me try to frame it. I wasn't trying to get kicked out of Scientology. I was trying to not get kicked out of Scientology. So what happened first, first my mom got kicked out for basically talking some smack about David Miscavish.

And then they go to me and they go, okay, you've got to disconnect from your mom or you're gonna get kicked out. And I lied about that. I was like, okay, I'll disconnect. But I never did. For a couple of years, I lied to my ass off about it. Eventually, they were like,

this guy's gonna keep lying to us, right? And they're like, yeah, like, all right, you're out. So then they go to my wife. So you got to divorce your husband or you're like, yeah, all right, you're out. So then they go to my wife. So you gotta divorce your husband or you're gonna get kicked out. And she goes, no. That's a hell of a statement from her.

It's gonna get harder from here. So I'm not quite sure how to, okay. So I'll try to get, I'll try to do my best. You don't seem like a man who's afraid of hard things. Okay, so she's like, no. Something that go to her parents. And they say, you've got to disconnect from your daughter and your three granddaughters,

but you're gonna get kicked out. But they have three other kids who are Scientologists, who have spouses who are Scientologists, who have grandkids. So I feel like up until that point, everybody was sort of making a decision for themselves and what would be best for themselves until they get to our parents. And then they're like, which grandkids are we gonna lose? Okay. At the part where they were trying to get me to disconnect from my mom,

there were hours that I spent talking to them going, you know guys, there's another way. It doesn't have to go this way. There's another way that ends well for all of us and that wasn't even considered. And I go, like, they created this monster. And that's a fact. And that's why I take joy in it.

When people ask me a Scientology or Destructive cult, I don't even have to get into all the academic discussions of what's a religion and what's a cult and what's the difference. I go, as long as they destroy families like that, they're a cult. So they cut people off deliberately, one by one. And it doesn't have to be that way.

Right. And why is it that way? I mean, it started with Elrond Hubbard laying out a policy framework, a policy structure that if interpreted and applied in the worst possible way with the worst possible judgment can be abused in that way.

I would make the argument that if an anti-broker had taken over, that Scientology policy does have enough little caveats baked into it that even the policies about disconnection could be interpreted and implemented in a non-destructive way. There is room for judgment and discretion. And misgivage has just created the worst possible version of Scientology. And that's where you sort of get that argument of, does he even want Scientology to succeed? Because he seems to be hell bent on making sure that he doesn't. And I don't want to see him make it succeed, but it does bring that question up of like,

what are his motivations? Can he not see that he's destroying the thing he's supposed to be expanding? That's also, you know, there's ways to measure cost. And that would probably be the most costly aspect of Scientology, is the suffering associated with the separating of families. Yeah. I mean, that's actually just puts make it's a very concrete what we value in human life is the connection to our loved ones. Like everything else doesn't matter. Like getting 50 bucks a week, like that, like,

getting money stolen from you, getting the money stolen from you, getting the truth stolen from you, none of that compares. You can even frame that as a good, there could be a lot of positives, whatever, in the tribe, but separating families, separating loved ones, that's the destructive thing. So no hate though. No, I genuinely don't hate them.

Do you forgive them? 100%. There's no one I look at in Scientology that I go, how dare you. If I was in their shoes, having to operate under David Miscavige's orders, I would have done the same thing and I would have loved it.

Truthfully, I don't blame any of them. I mean, I take the opposite approach. If they knew what I knew, they'd be doing what I'm doing Yeah, if they knew what I knew I believed it they'd be doing what I'm doing. They're not dumb. It's not it's not dumb people in Scientology They're ambitious. They're dreamers. They got hope. They're driven all that kind of stuff. Yeah, and it's one of the reasons I like putting up content on my channel so they can see, hey, like if you're a Scientologist, you look at that and you go, hey, he seems like he's doing well,

he's kind of, he's happy, he's a positive guy, he's a good communicator, he knows what he's talking about, he's not lying, he's not exaggerating, I don't exaggerate anything on my channel. I don't make up anything. And this is actually comes from an experience I had from 1998 to 2000. I was living in LA. I showed out a two year period of my life where I actually had almost no contact with Scientology. And during that time, I found my way onto

the internet. And there was a website. It might have been ESMB, X Scientology message, but whatever it was, it was at that time, the main source of critical information about Scientology on the internet. And I looked at it. And remember, I was still a true believer. And I looked at this, and it was so offensive, insulting, hyperbolic, exaggerated, I was like, oh, just a bunch of bullshit. I was in Scientology for 16 more years. If what I had seen on the internet about critical of Scientology, if what I had seen when I had seen it was something that

actually resonated with me, that I was like, oh, that I believed was true. That seemed credible. I would have gotten out of Scientology 16 years earlier. So I was like, how can I help create an experience on the internet that if a Scientologist stumbles upon it, it will resonate with them instead of repelling them. And that is exactly what I have set out to do and what I believe I've accomplished. There's the content, the message, but also just showing that you can be happy outside of Scientology. Exactly. You can have also just showing that you can be happy outside of Scientology.

Exactly. You can have a feeling like you can be a good man. Yeah. All that. What benefit do you think Tom Cruise gets from Scientology? So why is he still in Scientology? He genuinely loves it. And also, miscavage does, there's one celebrity who does have the most unique experience in

Scientology. And that is Tom. Scientology hires all of Tom's staff. There are no, all of Tom's staff are subject to interrogations by Scientology, not only in the hiring process, but during the employment like David Miscavich and Scientology runs Tom Cruz's life and his production company and his household staff. Do you imagine there's some personal connection there where they're just, they like each other a lot? Best friends.

I mean, it's them against the world is how they say it. I think it's pretty easy to see how that works but between the two of them. I think this idea of them against the world, us against the world, is a really powerful, powerful intimate. I kind of see like friendships and relationships that way that I'm not in a dark sense, but it's like the world is full of cruelty and absurdity and unfairness and so on. And it's nice to just huddle together

like the penguins in March of the year against the cold. 100% and they're just like, and so especially with the ideology of Scientology, this idea that you can be anything, you can essentially manifest it, essentially, through believing it. You don't really put it into those words, but believing that you're a God is a really like inspiring positive thing to think. If they could figure out how to do all that without destroying families and bankrupting its members, they might actually have a future. That's why, like, it's funny, because sometimes I feel like it's like I'm rooting for them to succeed and do it right.

And I'm not, but it's an interesting academic discussion to have of like, we can all see how much people will sacrifice in the names of belief and religion. Yeah. We can see how much Scientologists sacrifice based on what they already believe. If you would just start treating people less horribly, you know what I'm saying? It might actually have a future. But that's what I wanted to. It seems like this dark lesson of human nature

that there's something about, to use the word cults, that you just stop seeing reality for what it is. There's a lot of things that could make this a better organization that's actually helping people flourish and be a little bit more like loose about membership, not dividing families, not causing suffering, not causing financial harm, but actually inspiring people and helping people. But then maybe it's fundamentally changes

of what the organization is. And maybe that means something like David miscavige loses power too, which might be very difficult or people that are close to lose power. And people hold on to power. Whatever the human forces here, it seems to become worse and worse over time. What about, oh, I'm asking a conspiracy question. Is there a chance that Tom Cruise is being blackmailed, that there's information from auditing? No? So that kind of stuff is not... That's very conspiracy. I've actually come out and said definitively. that Tom Cruise is being blackmailed, that there's information from auditing, no? No.

So that kind of stuff is not, that's very conspiracy. I've actually come out and said definitively, I do not know of a single person who stays in Scientology because they're afraid of being blackmailed. It's just not a thing. It's just not a thing.

Does Scientology have enough information to blackmail someone if they wanted to? Well, sure. I mean, and it doesn't have to be true. It could just be lies. Who cares? Who knows? Scientists can say whatever the hell they want.

So that's the thing. It doesn't even have to be true. And actually, that would be the argument against blackmailing. Like in order for Scientology to blackmail you with that information, they'd actually have to represent that yes, he really did tell us this. And it's like, well, why are you spilling secrets of members? Like it says, a bad precedent.

What are some of the sins of going to the Scientology? Most of the sins from a Scientology perspective are just doing or saying anything that brings disrepute to Scientology itself. Remember, it's not like Christianity where there's rules. If you break this rule, you're not getting it to heaven. Because Scientology doesn't think about things. There's the drug. You can't do drugs, right?

You can't do drugs. And you can't take any psychotropic medications. And no medications, almost at all. You're allowed to take medications. It's just, there's no rules, expressly prohibiting it. It's just most Scientologists tend not to. You can take Advil, but many Scientologists won't. You just can't take anything prescribed by a psychiatrist, a psychologist, or any drugs

that are psychotropic drugs. I mean, SSRIs are considered probably the closest thing to pure evil in the world of Scientology. What about weird questions? What about sex? Is there boundaries on what's... They're used to not be. It's become very pure tanical in the last many decades.

For a reason, I can't actually explain. Like, miscavage does seem to be infatuated with controlling sex. Like that is one thing about miscavage version of Scientology that's gotten very strange. I mean, I'll run Hubbard even specifically wrote a policy that says, we are no longer going to regulate in any way the bedroom activities of people. He literally said, from this point on, no one is allowed to be subject to any justice actions of any kind whatsoever for anything they do in their sexual lives. But that still did not give permission for gay relationships. That was still referring to straight stuff.

And monogamous only. Can you do open marriages and open relationships? According to that, over on Hubbard Policy, you can. Yeah, but you know. I think you wrote that policy before he created the C organization. And then what happened is, this is actually how this came into effect.

He created the C organization. You had a lot of people on a ship, and everybody was just banging each other, and it created just a nightmare of personal relationship that it was making production impossible. Not because everybody was spending so much time banging, but because everybody was so upset about who was banging you.

It was, yeah. I mean, there's sex and that kind of dynamics really, I mean, human, human's dude, what humans do, and then there's drama mind, all that. It's understandable because everybody's so intimate, it's a closed tribe. It makes sense to limit sex, otherwise, everyone's, but otherwise it becomes a sex cult. Yeah, which a lot of them end up becoming. Or a topic, would you classify Scientology as a cult?

100%. But not because I'm fully conversant with the academic differentiations between what's a religion and what's a cult? I mean, Scientology would say, well, all small new religions are cults. And I don't know, that's probably true. Some people would say all religions are cults.

And it might be like, depends on how you define religion. And it depends on how you define cults. But I just fall back on my thing of like, if you're destroying families and bankrupting your members, you're occult. That's how I look at it. It's us versus them and the them could be your family, it could be your loved ones that

deeply destructive and one of the things you would probably throw into definition of occult is something that's actually destructive. It's like I do a lot of stuff that's cult like, like, Gijitsu. Like, there's a lot of really close knit tribes, but there's no negative toxicity to it. There's no divide, there's no divisions. Or if there is, it's more, boy, try being a fan of a certain soccer team and then becoming a fan of another soccer team. That's hard core. And they... But I'll tell you, I trained you Jitsu as well and I have found that community of

people to be one of the most loving and helpful group of people ever. Shout out to John Keller, Gracie Baja Claywater. No, but seriously, it's one of the reasons I continue to do it, despite my back, my hip, my shoulder. It's just such a cool group of guys. This goes on. Used to not, I think it was much more divisive in the beginning from Brazilian roots. One of the things that's really hard

is the team oriented like, if you're this team, you're you're out of diet with this team. And there's no other, there's the crunches that go to another team. And I think that aspect, that was actually a turn off from me in the beginning, that the toxicity of that because I understand that a little bit for the elites, for the highest of the highest, that there is, I like the brotherhood and the loyalty of the people like the Olympic gold medalist, the like the best of the highest, that there is, I like the brotherhood and the loyalty of the people, like the Olympic gold medalist, the best in the world, yes, but for like recreational fun. I know. It's like, this is all ultimately about the camaraderie of all human beings together,

not some whatever label you put on yourself. I don't think we actually talked about the organization itself. We talked about tax exempt status, which is really important. We talked about some of the control, like through the propaganda control of what's out there. It's actually interesting that you said that, like, the Scientology is pretty much lost the battle with the internet at the end. Which is kind of inspiring that it's hard to defeat the internet.

But then there's like bots there. I think if you're sophisticated, I'm not sure that's true. But if you're not successful. It's kind of remarkable they haven't been able to capitalize on these bot armies because there's one thing that they have. It's a lot of tax-free money that they got nothing else better to do. Yeah, right. So you can invest, you know, they just, they should give you a call. Like they just don't have the right people apparently. But that said, how do they wield influence with government agencies with you've talked about the local police enforcement, also federal agencies, anything? That is the one way they effectively put their money to use is lobbyists and attorneys, you know, judges, very rarely have they ever ever been able just to get a politician on their side.

It's the behind the scenes people. Greta Van Sustrin is a very high-level long-term Scientologist. And her husband, I always get around and say, the Jim Cole or John Cole, I always get it wrong. He's a very powerful attorney who has a lot, wields a lot of influence behind the scenes. And that's just one example. Like, the reason why that's an interesting example is because he's actually a Scientologist, any travels in those circles. Scientology, though, it's money goes to good

use by hiring non-scientologists, retired judges, attorneys, lobbyists. It really is how they get almost anything done. Like, miscavage himself is not hobnobb and in glad hanging and shaking hands and meeting these folks. It's the non-scientologist professionals who work behind the scenes on Scientology's behalf. Can you describe the dynamics of that, how that actually happens? Like why would the police department work on behalf of Scientology? I meant more the courts and regulators, not the police department, but well, for example, it can come down to something as simple as this. Sign in clear water, Scientology hires clear water police

to do off-duty work for them. They pay like three times the normal off-duty rate. So they will, even though I'm not aware of anyone on the clear water PD who's actually a Scientologist, they basically end up with, they would call them allies or safe points, right? People who like like, will

literally operate a Scientology Spice, you know, someone comes in and follows a report about some child sex case. Someone in the Clearwater PD is calling Sarah Heller at the Office of Special Affairs at the Flank Latin Base to let her know, hey, heads up, we got a thing coming in, and then Scientology can run around and go, talk to all the Scientologists who have knowledge about this and you get them out of clear water, you know. So it's not like a direct explicit corruption, but more just the friends and co-workers integrated deeply in the community. Yeah, I call it soft corruption.

So another example, you have the mayor of Clearwater, Frank Hibbert. Well, he used to, when he won his recent election, he stepped down from some of these nonprofits that he served on. But the nonprofits that he served on also gets millions of dollars of donations from some of Scientology's richest Clearwater members, right? You have one of the mayor's best friends, Joe Burdett, literally a paid lobbyist for Scientology. So that creates a chilling effect on anyone who's gonna be talking smack about Scientology because his friends are on their damn payroll. So I call it soft corruption, it's not illegal.

It's not illegal, It's not illegal. But it's how Scientology wields influence. And what's ironic is that a lot of these people who work on Scientology behalf actually secretly hate Scientology. They kind of see through it, but it's part of the community. I mean, it's deeply integrated in the community and there's financial leverage. Are you ever afraid? I mean, afraid for your wellbeing, afraid for your ability to function in society because of the pressures from Scientology? No. Is that because you're genetically malfunctioning or mentally or is there speaking out as a kind of protection?

I think it's one of those things that once you've seen behind the curtain and you see the Wizard of Oz, it's just a silly man that once you've seen behind the curtain, you see the Wizard of Oz is just a silly man You just don't have any fear now. It's one of these things like people is all you're so brave And I go what's that quote bravery is you know being a soldier and being afraid and going in anyway It's not brave to run and if you don't think you nothing's gonna happen to you like so I'm just trying to like I do not hold myself up As an example of bravery because yeah, I it's not like, oh, they could destroy me, but I don't care. No, there's not a damn thing they can do to me. And it's one of, that's one of the reasons

I continue to put out content every day. So just basically go, hey, still here. I dare you to try to do something about it, but you can't, and hope that that also serves as kind of an example for other people to go, if this smoke can do it, and they can't do other people to go, if this smoke can do it, and they can't do anything else to him, then maybe I can do it too.

Because I would love it. I would love there for be a 20 channels where former Scientologists talk about their experience. I mean, that is bravery because what happens is fear seeps in, even if it's not grounded in reality. But at the same time, like, you know, my grandfather who fought in World War II, I mean, the story is, I mean, he was very convinced and sure. Most of the people he fought alongside would died. He was a machine gunner. But he believed that bullets can't hit him.

Right. He said, well, you know, he was right. Right? Because he survived. So there's some sense like you're over by us. That he's like, just like you are, I was like, yeah, I'm not brave. I just the both can't hit me.

I mean, there's a dark kind of truth to that. There's some ask you, you know, it's like, it's a feedback loop where if you have the confidence and you push on forward and you're braving that way to not let fear seep in and affect you, it actually gives you less things to be scared of out. And yeah, I mean, but that initial few steps might be for people, it might be a very difficult step to take to talk about publicly. The fear was knowing how the family was going to be destroyed

and trying to prevent that. I was terrified of that happening, but it happened. There's nothing left to be afraid of. And that's kind of the thing, like they created this beast and the same is true from Mark Hadley, the same is true from Mike Rinder. I said, they've essentially created a Scientology proof virus, Scientology resistant strain,

by throwing everything they have at us for so many years, they have just, through natural selection created people who just do not give a damn about anything they could or would do. And maybe there is something a little wrong with me because when I get a phone call from someone, like, I just got this phone call about you. And it's clear that it's Scientology PIs doing work behind the scenes. I get really

excited. I get really excited. I don't get nervous. I'm going, oh, no, it's having like, oh, yeah, this is going to be exciting. I'm like, okay, because everything they try to do to me, I'm going to figure out how to reflect it back on them and make them look ridiculous. And that pale isn't comparison to the separating from family exactly. What is there is there parts to your family that you've lost because of the Scientology? Just, yes. If you most of my episode on the Lee Remini and the Aftermath show was talking about me and my

twin brother, it's just a pretty horrible story. It's just a pretty horrible story. So I do have a younger brother who's still in Scientology and disconnected from me, but I never had much of a relationship with that brother really to begin with. But my twin brother died when I was like 23 or 24. And that was without any question, a direct result of our Scientology experience. You know, he died in a car accident that wasn't technically his fault or anything like he wasn't even the one driving. But the fact, the specific fact of his death was not meaning like the fact and the manner of his death and time wasn't like specifically because of Scientology. But our story and how, where our relationship got to and how he was even in a position of having something like that happen to him

is directly attributable to Scientology. Do you think about him? Miss him? It's part of what you're doing in memory of him. Yeah, for sure. And this is such a... You know, we were identical twins. Can you imagine two of me? I could barely handle what.

I love it. Losing him would that be the darkest moment in this whole journey of Scientology for you? Two moments would equal the darkest moment. It would be that. And also just the period of, you know, six, nine, 12 months of impending doom. Knowing that my wife's whole family was going gonna be obliterated. And that there's nothing we could do about it. And kind of telling ourselves every step of the way it wasn't really gonna happen. You know.

And I really felt like, you ever watched the Ozarks? I felt like Marty Bird. Now, this was happening before the Ozarks, but when I watch the Ozarks and I see that character, the entire world is crumbling down around him and all he can all I did like All right, what's the next step? I watch Marty Bird and I go that's my fucking spirit animal Because you can only control what you can control. And you can't keep Scientology from destroying your family. And literally, like I, it's funny.

I mentioned this show a lot because I watched that and I go like, that's exactly how I felt. You know, I talk about this six months or nine, 12 months, whatever was of impending doom. It's not like I was an emotional wreck during that time. You know, in private I was, but it's not like, I was of impending doom. It's not like I was an emotional wreck during that time. In private I was, but it's not like, I was just freaking out.

It was like, the sun's gonna come up tomorrow. The world's gonna keep spinning. I can't control it. I can't believe this is happening. But tomorrow's a new day. I've never personally, even at the darkest times, I've never experienced anything that I would characterize as depression, certainly not ever any suicidal thoughts or anything. Even in the darkest of times, and again, this one thing I go, is it because of Scientology

or is it just me, there really is an emotional detachment. There almost has to be. It's a cold calculation. What are my options? What do I do here? And then once I figure out the answer to that question, I'm actually quite chipper and happy. You know, like that's sort of my default.

Like you could give me six horrible options. Once I figure out the best of those six, I'm gonna feel like I just had a pretty good day. That's brilliant. Because I just watching Ozarks is so stressful. It is, right? So stressful watching it. And he usually finds a way.

And usually it is a set of really bad options and it's one of the bad options, but it's the best of the bad options. And he almost gets pissed off at everyone around him for being so pouty about it. But you know, it's like, you know, it's still simmering there right under the surface, like pretty damn close to the surface.

Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And people sometimes ask about recovery and whatnot, and like, what does that look like? And what does that mean? And it sort of goes back to kind of the emotional detachment is I go, what the fuck does recovery even mean? If you're an alcoholic and you're recovering, you know what that means.

I used to drink. I don't drink now. Well, I used to be an occult and I'm not an occult now. How else am I supposed to feel about this for someone to be like, it seems like you've recovered? What the fuck does that even mean? Like I'm sure some academic hasn't answered that question.

I'm not someone who I don't spend any time thinking about that. My recovery is success and a little bit of trolling and revenge, but mostly success. You know, what does it mean to be a recovered former cult member? What you don't cry would be, I'll ask you about your brother.

I don't know what it means. I've never had therapy, but not because I'm still like against it means. I've never had therapy, but not because I'm still like, against it from Scientology. I just like, I'm not gonna pay to talk to someone. Do you know where else I could do that? Scientology. Now, I know there's a lot of people going like,

oh boy, I know there's a lot, I'm not shitting on therapy. I would rather have a beer with my friend and talk about this shit, then talk to a professional for $200 an hour. That's a kind of therapy, yeah. Yeah, listen, part of the design, I do this podcast. It's talking to people that you care about that you're close with.

It's a really powerful, powerful thing. Yeah, I don't know what recovery looks like. Success to you is defined happiness. Find happiness outside the closed bubble that defines what happiness looks like, a Scientology. If I can make my kids happy, that's success to me. What advice would you give to your kids

on how to live? Travel the world. A life they can be proud of, travel the world. Travel the world. Get rid of friends who don't push you up and don't celebrate your success. It's hard to give that advice to young children because kids are always so caddy. But honestly, it's like when I see that really is, I just think not just advice to my kids,

but some of the best advice to anybody. If you've got anyone around you who doesn't celebrate your success, just spend less time with those people. Surround yourself with people who actually want to celebrate your success and post you to succeed. I think that's true. I think it's even more important at a young age because if at a young age you get used to being around people who kind of take joy and tearing you down,

then that's what you become accustomed to. Yeah. And I just think, you know, then that's what you become accustomed to. Yeah. You know, and I just think, you know, having friends who love you and support you's just about the closest thing to the true meaning of life. And who believe in you, who believe in your potential, and some of those ideas underlie the good parts of Scientology.

Yeah. And except there's a lot of dark parts of Scientology that separate you from the people that believe in you and that love you Well, this is a beautiful conversation your beautiful human being who came full of gifts and I mean, I I mean I genuinely first of all you're an aspiring human being But most importantly I can't wait until I can purchase a bobble head on the store. So I can keep that inspiration on my desktop. Aaron, thank you so much for talking to me.

Thank you for being you for being brave. I know you said you're not, but thank you for being brave for talking about this. You're an inspiration and you're helping a lot of people. Thank you, brother. Thanks for having me. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Aaron Smith-Levin. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, let me leave you with some words from Ralph Waldo Emerson. Be not the slave of your own past. Plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep and swim far.

plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep and swim far, so you will come back with new self-respect, with new power, and with an advanced experience that will explain and overlook the old. Thank you.