Somewhere in the Skies - Surviving Scientology: Part 1

Episode Date: April 1, 2019

On episode 102 of SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES, Ryan is joined by Joey Chait, an ex-member of the church of Scientology. Born into this highly controversial religion, Chait navigated his way up the ranks of the Church's many "spiritual" levels to become a prominent member. But it all came crashing down with a string of events so disturbing that it led to him leaving Scientology behind, along with losing his entire family in the process. In part 1 of this series, we learn the incredible creation myth of the religion itself, the horrible things Chait endured, and what prompted him to finally break free at a very unfortunate cost. Guest Bio: Joey Chait is a former member of the Church of Scientology and was raised in the cult since birth. He was forced into Scientology training courses at a very young age, and worked in the family business, with his Scientology family for most of his life. In 2016, Joey decided to publicly speak out against Scientology, including his story of being gay and growing up in a homophobic cult. Joey continues to speak publicly about the abusive practices of Scientology and is currently writing an autobiography about his life in the cult. Joey is happily engaged to his long-time partner in Los Angeles and continues to work with ex-Scientologists, or anyone wishing to leave a cult, especially those that are part of the LGBTQ + community. Patreon: www.patreon.com/somewhereskies To watch ROSWELL: MYSTERIES DECODED for free, CLICK HERE  Website: www.somewhereintheskies.com YouTube Channel: CLICK HERE Official Store: CLICK HERE Order Ryan's Book by CLICKING HERE Twitter: @SomewhereSkies Instagram: @SomewhereSkiesPod Opening Theme Song, "Ephemeral Reign" by Per Kiilstofte SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES is part of the eOne podcast network. To learn more, CLICK HERE SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES is sponsored by HelloFresh. To receive 50% off your first order, use promo code: SOMEWHERE50 at checkout by visiting www.HelloFresh.ca Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/somewhere-in-the-skies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At first, I didn't think it was real. I woke up to this blinding light, and I was transported to another place. Pluto TV! Then I heard a voice. Come with me if you want to live. There were thousands of movies and shows, and they were all free.

The truth is ours. It's just so beautiful. On Pluto TV, free streaming of Terminator 2, fringe arrow, the 100 NX files may cause excitement, loss of sleep, and sudden belief in extraterrestrials. No credit cards or alien encounters necessary. Pluto TV, stream now, pay never.

Hey y'all, Ryan Spreck here. As you all know, the Somewhere in the Sky's podcast is always free to consume, but it isn't free to create. That's why I've started the Somewhere in the Sky's Patreon campaign. On a monthly basis, you give what you think the show is worth. You'll be helping the show continue, grow, and to be something truly communal. And remember, there are rewards for each level of contribution, and the list is only grown.

So please, help Somewhere in the Skies now by becoming a page. To contribute and to learn more, visit www.patriot.com backslash SomewhereSkies. Thank you for your support. And now on with the show. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this episode of Somewhere in the Skies are solely that of the guest and host. And do not reflect those of the E1 podcast network or of our sponsors. You are hope. You are imagination. You are the power to to change, to create, and to grow. You are a spirit that will never die. And no matter how being down,

you will rise again. Scientology. Know yourself. No life. Just really horrible, physically and verbally abusive. I've seen tier members get into fights. I saw them beat up an old man because he refuse to do an all-nighter one night, which happens a lot.

Wow. So you remember stay up all night and do these crazy things because they have to meet their deadlines and they have to do it because if their statistics are down from the previous week, then it's all over. Then they go get sent to ethics and they're punished for it. This is Somewhere in the Skies with Ryan Sprague. I'm Ryan Sprague and this is somewhere in the skies. Scientology.

One of the most successful new American faiths to have emerged in the past century. At its core, it is a belief that each human has a reactive mind that responds to life's traumas, clouding the analytic mind and keeping us from experiencing reality. Members of the religion submit to a process called auditing to find the sources of this trauma, reliving those experiences in an attempt to neutralize them and reassert the primacy of the analytic mind, working toward a spiritual state called clear. As you climb the bridge to spiritual freedom, you pledge allegiance to the church above all else, working towards helping mankind and awakening the world.

But somewhere along the way, it became very clear that this church was hiding very dark and disturbing stories behind the walls of its international churches. And as time progressed, more and more members begin to speak out about its wrongdoings and practices, and the results have been absolutely. terrifying. Today we hear from ex-member Joey Chate. Born into the religion by his devout parents, Joey became one of Scientology's most prominent members, and then it all came crashing down when he decided to leave the church. And it wasn't easy. Today Joey runs us through how it all began for him. He also breaks down the religion for us, its strange creation story, what he endured in and

outside of the church, and just exactly why he left and is urging others to do the same. This is a two-part series covering one-man's struggle with faith, sexuality, allegiance, and finally, starting a new life. Here is part one of breaking the billion-year contract of Scientology with Joey Chate. Joey, thank you so much for joining me today and somewhere in the skies. Thank you so much for having me. This is like been a really long time in the making, man. Yeah, I feel like it's been almost a year since the last time I saw you that we were talking about this. Yeah, yeah.

It has literally been almost a year. And it was, it was interesting. So for those who don't know, I was working in a coffee shop in L.A., coffee for Sasquatch. So if anyone's in the Hollywood slash Fairfax area, go check them out. That's my shameless plug for my own place of employment. But you were one of our regulars. And I always saw you in the corner kind of scribbling in a notebook, writing. And I'm like, oh, he's one of those writers.

He's one of those guys who comes in, does his work. And I love it. I love seeing people doing their stuff there, man. And so, so typical for L.A. It is. It is. It is in New York, too. But in L.A., everyone's in the business, whether you know it or not.

And also, there's a lot of Scientologists, which we will get to in L.A., whether you know it or not. But I'm getting ahead of myself here. So I talked to one of my fellow employees, and they'd inform me that you were a former member of the Church of Scientology. And I was like, oh, my God. I was like, I would love to interview him. I've never spoken to an ex-scientologist before. So I was really excited to talk to you a little nervous.

I'm not going to lie. But after actually meeting you, I was like, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, a normal guy who was a part of this thing. So thank you again for doing this and for ostensibly telling us stories that a lot of us don't know about things that have happened in the church and whatnot. So again, there's our origin story. But I got to ask you, man, what is your origin story? How did you get involved with Scientology? There's a big misconception out there of, oh, these people are so stupid if they're recruited into this religion, but it was a lot different for you. So how'd this all start? Well, I was born into it. I'm a, what they call a second generation Scientologist. So my parents

got into it back in the 70s, in the early 70s before I was born. And they got suckered into it. And then by the time I was born and by the time my two younger brothers were born, they were already fully indoctrinated into Scientology. So it was basically the religion that I was raised with. I didn't really have a choice in the matter. They did, which was stupid. So I ended up suffering for their mistakes, which most kids do, especially when it comes to religions or cults. Absolutely. I mean, we can all attest, you know, whether, I mean, I was born and raised Roman Catholic, and I also had no choice in the matter. And the older you get, that's when you sort of, you know, it's either sink or swim. Do I keep going or what? You know, there's a lot of pressure. There's a lot of pressure

when you're a young kid growing up in a religion, as I'm sure it was with this as well, whether it is a cult or not. So yeah, I mean, I did ask for listener questions for this episode, and a lot of people are like, how could you join this religion? Like, after everything we've learned, how could someone join?

And I answered that for you on your behalf, saying he was born into it. So a lot of people don't have that choice. And I didn't have that. choice unfortunately and the thing that a lot of people don't realize about Scientology is that every facet of your life especially when you're in the family of Scientologists and from a famous Scientology family who donated a lot of money everything is already decided for you and you don't really have a choice whether it has to do with your finances your personal life, your work, everything

surrounds the Church of Scientology. and when you grow up in a in a in a in a in a sort of environment like that you get brainwashed and that's exactly what happens to me and you become so brainwashed into thinking like they do and talking like they do scientologists have their own language we have abbreviations for everything hubbard i believe was a very dyslexic and uneducated man and he takes he he he he he love to take regular english words and put weird twists on them to make the mean different things. So like I will be talking in my Scientology speak to like my, my fiance Michael, and I'll say something, a regular English word. And he'll look at me and be like, I'm sorry, wait, what did you just say? Because it's not real English. It grammatically doesn't make any sense. So after I started, you know, sort of waking up and realizing that Scientology was complete matter of bullshit, I had to relearn the language and like actually learn what the actual definitions of some of these regular words mean. So that's how, that's how, how, I guess the right

word is brainwash. You just get so indoctrinated into the thing. You have to literally wake up and pull yourself out of it. It's crazy. Yeah. So I mean, would you, would you consider that then, like a deprogramming? We hear about this a lot when people are brainwashed in, in what is considered cults. How long did it take to really, I guess, deprogram yourself? Years. Years, years, years. It wasn't a thing. And one of the biggest questions that people ask me is like, when was that aha moment or when was that moment when was that moment when was that moment? It's sort of like, it's like a slow burn. It takes years of just slowly coming out of it and then slowly realizing it. And then eventually you get to the point where you're, I, it's almost like climbing over a fence, except just very, very slowly. It takes, a while. You've got to climb up one by one and then you get to the top and then you slowly come down the other side. But eventually, I made it there. Thank God. Exactly. I'm so happy that we're having this conversation today. Me too. Well, I mean, okay, so I don't know how anyone couldn't really know

what Scientology is at this point. You know, the glory of the internet, the glory of television. But for anyone who might not be too familiar, Joey, I'm going to sort of ask you, could you give us kind of the rundown of what Scientology is. You mentioned Hubbard, so who started it, and kind of the overall mission of the religion, maybe? I don't know if that's even possible to do in, like, an elevator pitch, but yeah. Please, yeah.

I can give you the quick two-minute version. So a guy named El Ron Hubbard, who was a science fiction writer, he wrote a ton of work in the 1930s and the 1940s, mostly science. science fiction stuff. And then in the 1950s, actually, I believe it was in 1950. He wrote a book called Dynetics. Actually, the full name of the book is Dianetics, the modern science of mental health. And basically what he had discovered, I use that term loosely, he discovered that all human beings have something called a reactive mind. So there's two parts of your mind. There's the analytical side of your mind, which is the normal one. And it solves problems and it does good

things for you. And then there's the other side of your mind, which is called the reactive mind. That stores all of your bad memories, painful memories, times that you were unconscious, sicknesses and stuff like that. And that was the thing that was causing all of your diseases. So basically, Dianetics is when the mind heals the body. So because you have a cold or because you have bad eyesight or because you have cancer or whatever the ailment could be, you use the technology of dionetics to cure the problem from your mind, which will then in turn heal the body. So he started this, and it was kind of a fad in the 1950s, and then he realized a couple of years after he wrote dionetics, he was like, well, you know, the best way to go about this is to start a religion. He would get tax-exempt status and people like the medical field and like the American Psychiatric Association that were coming after him saying, you guys are ridiculous.

this Dianetics doesn't actually work. So he was like, well, I'm just going to start a religion and say that it's, you know, a church. So they can't come after me for medical malpractice or medical fraud. So that's when he started Scientology. So he continued with his Scientology writings and he's written thousands upon thousands upon thousands of pages and done thousands of hours of lectures on the subject of dealing with Scientology, which has to do not with the mind like Dianetics did, but Scientology has to do with the soul or the spirit. So he created this whole series of practices or things that you do.

Scientology really isn't a belief system. It's something that you do. It's an applied religious philosophy. So Scientologists do things like they go study courses where they learn about what Hubbard wrote, what he says are like the factors for life or improving your relationships and getting along with others. And then they do this thing called auditing. Auditing is the, is the same. Scientology term for, basically for therapy. And Hubbard wrote these very exact and very detailed auditing. He calls them processes or a process. So there's these auditing processes that you do.

And the purpose of it, they say, is to help obviously get rid of your reactive mind and get rid of all of these negative emotions and negative things so that you can live a happier and better life. And when you put it like that, it doesn't sound so bad necessarily. but in reality it's much, much more insidious than it appears on the surface. So that's the basic, that's the basic gist of it in a nutshell. Right. Yeah.

And, you know, as you're saying that, I'm thinking to myself, that's actually not too bad of an idea. I mean, it's not. It's not. And they want and they always say like, well, we want to, we want to help people. We want to help people, you know, do better in life. And their whole purpose is to save the planet or save the humans on this. planet because if once they get enough Scientologists into Scientology and up the Scientology levels, eventually they say that there would be no more wars, no more criminality, no more insanity,

everything will be nice and shiny and happy and wonderful. And then people who oppose them, they say, well, these are the purposes of Scientology. How could you argue with that? Do you not want a world without, without criminality and without war? So it's it's a it's a pretty sick system that they have Yeah, right. And we'll get deeper into like the whole audio process and kind of the almost hijacking of Hubbard's original intent for all this. But this is really interesting. When I first moved to New York, Joey, I, I flired on the streets of Times Square for like two and a half years. So I literally was out there eight hours a day heading out flyers to Broadway shows, comedy clubs, restaurants. Whatever they wanted me to do, I was out there. I love the I honestly did. Yeah. It was like the best paying job I ever had because what idiot would stand outside 50 hours a week handing out flyers. But what was really interesting is I met a guy while I was out there and we actually became like pretty close like really good friends.

And we we talked a lot about our family together and like our relationship problems or what have you. And it was cool to like go to work and have someone that camaraderie. Like he was doing his thing. I was doing mine handing out flyers, and he was handing out something else. And it actually took me a while to realize he was a Scientologist. And he was handing out these flyers to see a free movie at the Manhattan Church of Scientology. And what was really interesting is he and I were close. And I kind of like watched the people that he would approach. And I noticed trends in like the demographics of the people that he would stop. And,

get to go watch this free movie. And at that time, I didn't really know what Scientology was. I didn't know how the whole intricate system to everything. I'm like, oh, that's, you know, whatever. You know, he's just trying to get people to go to his church. Cool. Sure, yeah. So, but yeah, I noticed these patterns of like the, the people that he would get to do it. And it always sort of seemed to be the same. So I wanted to ask you, do you know for like these type of people, the recruiters on the streets, is there like a protocol? for who they try to recruit? Is there like, so a grand way to get certain people into this religion?

Yeah. Well, first of all, the job title of those people that stand out on the streets, they do that here. There's that big Scientology Blue building, the one that's on Sunset Boulevard. Yeah, the Big Blue. They have a ton of people out there that are handing out flyers and they're trying to get you to take their stupid personality test or come in and see the movie.

Those guys, their job title is called, a body router. They literally are instructed to take people's bodies and bring them in because the statistic in Scientology, when a new person comes in the door to take a course or to get auditing, it's called bodies in the shop. So the body, so the body routers, that's their entire job. And they definitely go for a very specific type of person. And in Scientology, Hubbard once said that Scientology's purpose is to make the able more able. So they don't want someone who isn't able. Basically, what that means is that they want someone who looks like they have money.

They want someone that looks like they might be affluent, someone that looks like they've got their shit together. They don't want to deal with people who are mentally ill. They don't want to deal with people who look like they're poor. So that is sort of the thing that they're looking for. They're looking for able-bodied people that can come in and, I think that the reason for that is because they don't want to have any problems with, you know, someone coming in and having a psychotic break, which has happened. Or people who are sick or dying or someone who does that money, there's no purpose for them to do Scientology because if they can't pay for the courses, they don't want them at all. And we'll get to that, the paying part for sure.

Yeah, that's a huge part. Mentioning mental illness, didn't something just happen like this week? Something happened at the at the at the at the at the church of Scientology down in Englewood which which which incidentally my dad paid for. And we can and we and we and we can talk about that later. Sure. But I I guess some guy from from from from from the rumors that I've been hearing from some of my other ex Scientology friends, I guess this person was a parishioner.

He was actually taking courses at the Scientology church in Englewood. Okay. He pulled up in his he pulled up in his Bentley wielded a sword of some kind. And then I don't know how it happened, but like an officer got shot in the arm or shot in the hand or something. And they ended up killed. I think they shot and killed the guy with the sword. Right. That's what I heard.

Yeah. We're sort of waiting to hear what happens. But a couple of months ago, there was a stabbing at a church of Scientology down in Australia. And the church was quick to respond to that and say that it was a non-Scientology person that was crazy. that they sort of tried to pin it on Leah Remini in her show. They were basically saying that Leah Remini show was spreading all of this hate and religious bigotry, so that caused the person to come in and stab a non-Scientologist to come in and stab a Scientology member. But the church has been very silent about the thing that happened in Englewood just a few days ago.

So I'm pretty sure that it was one of their own that had the sword. That's what I'm thinking too, especially the whole sword thing. I mean, isn't there some sort of connection to, like, to Hubbard and, like, swords and everything, Excalibur or something like that? Well, the Excalibur, I think, was that was the name of a story that he wrote a very, very long time ago. I don't know what the sword represents. Okay. I mean, I might be getting a bit too conspiracy theory. Maybe.

But also, I mean, like, the C organization members, those are the guys that signed the billion-year contracts and they wear the naval-style uniforms. The sword is a very, you know, powerful symbol, you know, military-wise. And I think that for the, you know, when they get all dressed up in their sea organization uniform, some of them have little swords or flags or something. I don't know, maybe that has something to do with it. Yeah. Who knows? Who knows?

We may never know. Church seems to be pretty good at keeping people quiet as we're going to as well. For now. Yeah. Well, that's really interesting because that really demystifies like the whole body recruitment thing. That was interesting. And with that guy that I knew, I noticed as time went on, like he became more distant with me and stopped talking about his personal life. And then there came one day where it literally told me, I can't talk to you anymore.

He said that to me. And I was really hurt because, like, I confided it a lot in this dude. And I respected his beliefs. He respected mine. And then he just disappeared. I never saw him again. Haven't seen him since. Well, he probably got into ethics trouble.

And that happens a lot. if you do something wrong in Scientology, you get sent to ethics, and they basically, they have to try to fix you, or they have to try to correct you for whatever it is that you did wrong. So they probably pulled him back in because he did something, or he said something, or maybe he was having doubts about Scientology, or doubts about staying in Scientology, and they do not like that at all. And what they have is they have this thing called a security check, which is basically their nice way putting a, what it really is is a interrogation. They put you in a little room and they hook you up to the e-meter. That's that little machine that they use is kind of like a lie detector. And they grill you

for hours and hours and hours and ask you questions like, what have you done? Do you have evil intentions against the Church of Scientology? Do you have evil intentions against David Miscavage? Have you done something that you don't want to have found out about like for hours and hours and hours and they make you confess all of your crimes. Oh, my God, that sounds horrible. Oh, it's horrible. I've had my share of security checking for thousands and thousands of hours. Over a very long period of time, of course, you know, because I'm always getting in trouble

for something. I'm always saying, I'm always saying the wrong thing or I'm always doing the wrong thing. It's like, oh, Joey's got to go in for sec checking. Okay. Well, that seems to be very common in the religion, Joey. I mean, you hear all the time. like it's a religion of snitchers, you know, everyone's out for themselves.

It's completely a snitching environment. It's, that's how they keep control over people because you're not allowed to say anything negative about Scientology. You're not allowed to say anything negative about other Scientologists. I mean, I'll tell you a quick story. When I was a kid, I did a lot of my Scientology training very early in life. I started at the age of 13, which is very unusual. It doesn't happen very often, but of course, my parents being the huge Scientologist that they were.

Anyway, so when I started my training, I was at the Celebrity Center, and there was this one executive woman that was working there. And she was trying to convince me to basically quit school and come do my training at Celebrity Center full time. I said, listen, I'm sorry, but I have to go to school during the day, and then I come to Celebrity Center, you know, in the late afternoon, and I study into the evening. And she said to me, she was like, Joey, trying to convince me, this is the, this is the greatest thing that you can do. School is for idiots. And like, you're, you're not a regular person. You're a superhuman being. And I told her, I'm like, I'm not going to stop going to school.

I actually enjoy going to my school. So basically, she said, well, you know what, Joey? You can just go fuck yourself and go jump off the top of Celebrity Center. And they had a balcony up there. She said, go up to the six floor balcony and just jump off because you may as well kill yourself. Jesus. So I was really upset by that whole thing. And then another person came to me a few days later and they saw that I was upset.

And they were like, what's the matter? I said, oh, well, this executive, I said her name. And she told me to go kill myself. I'm really, really upset. They pulled me into a security check because I was being critical of her because she was, because she was an executive at Celebrity Center. I'm not allowed to say anything bad to her, even though what she said to me was 100% wrong. but it was also 100% true. But because I was saying a negative thing about a senior C organization

member, they pulled me into an interrogation and said, and asked me, what did I do wrong? What are my crimes? Wow. Yeah. So that's the, that's the, that's the way that they control people. Everybody's, everybody's snitching on everybody else. And if you, and you learn, I learned really quickly, if you say anything negative about something or somebody else in Scientology, then I knew that I myself would get in trouble. So you learn to just basically shut up and not say anything, even though if something wrong happened or if you know that it's wrong. It's all about control. I totally. It's, it becomes more clear, like the more stories you hear. But, um, okay. So you were one of like the youngest, uh, like you said, what, what, what were they auditors? Is that correct, Joey?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. So people who, um, deliver the Scientology. auditing, they call them auditors. So I was trained to be a Scientology auditor. So I was the one on the opposite side of the E-meter. So like I would be the one that would be giving the people the Scientology auditing processes essentially and helping them go up. And then eventually what I did was is that when you get into the confidential levels of Scientology, they call those the OT levels. I was the one that was yeah. Yeah. So so in the beginning I was trained to be an auditor at a very young age. I started like I said when I was 13. And this, you said going up.

Now, this is what I assume is the spiritual bridge. Is that what it is? Yeah. Yeah. So it's the Scientology. It's called the bridge to total freedom. So everybody, everybody starts at the bottom. And then step by step, you do these certain levels and you go starting from the bottom.

The first thing that you do is the, it's this thing called the purification rundown. That's the thing where you sit in a sauna for five hours a day and take heavy, heavy doses of, vitamins and particularly a vitamin called niacin. And Hubbard believed that like the first thing you have to do when you step onto the bridge to Total Freedom is you have to flush all of the drugs and the alcohol and the poisons out of your body. And he believed that a heavy diet of multivitamins and niacin and sitting in a sauna, you sweat out the toxins and the drugs that are stored in the fat cells of your body.

Okay. Which has been scientifically proven to be horseshit. But Scientologists still do it I was going to say I could actually see that working in some ways But well you know I did the I did the purification rundown twice And the only thing that I can say about it is that I lost a bunch of weight

Okay You know from sitting in a sauna for you know for five hours a day I felt a little healthier But I wouldn't recommend taking that much niacin I mean literally 5,000 milligrams of niacin per day Right I assume it's just Can't be good for you no i think that would destroy somebody's liver if they had like a slight liver problem i would think

yeah so anyway so yeah so you so i was the auditor i was the person that was taking people up the bridge from like level to level to level and how many levels are there like total so from the beginning of the bridge to the middle part which is where you reach a level called clear i'm sure people are very familiar with the clear thing right going that's one two three four five six six six six seven, eight, like eight or nine levels to clear. And then after clear, then you get to the OT levels. And right now it goes OT1 through OT8. On the bridge, it does go all the way up to OT15.

But at the moment, OT8 is the highest you can go. They haven't actually released OT9 and above yet. I think that they don't even exist. And I think it's just a carrot that they're dangling in front of all these other Scientologists to try to keep them on board. I see. Yeah. But who knows, who knows what Hubbard wrote in the late 80s before he died, who knows. Right. Yeah, we may never know.

Yeah, we probably won't. Some people think the secrets lie underground, but we'll get to that too. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so you, what level take you personally get to, Joey? And, yeah, what was that like when you got to that level? So I got to OT3, and OT3 is like the big Kahuna in Scientology, because on O'T that's when you discover basically Scientology's creation story, the story about Zinu, the galactic overlord of the galactic confederation

and the horrible things that he did 75 million years ago. Yep, we had to get there, man. This is a UFO podcast. That's what I'm saying. It's like so now we can talk about aliens. Let's do it. So when you're doing your auditing at the beginning part of the bridge to total freedom, you don't know anything about this.

You know what the OT levels are, but they're so confidential. They keep those materials. It's like going into Fort Knox. It's like in a special building behind security locked doors. The materials themselves are in these special packets, and they're kept in like these giant gun safes. And they're plugged in to like an electronic, I don't know what you call it, but they're plugged into the safe. And when I did the course, they took it out of the safe, they unplugged it. And then you take it to your little table so you can sit down and read it.

And there's a plug on the table. And you have 30 seconds to get it from the safe to the table. Otherwise, the alarms go off and the doors shut and security comes running in. I mean, they take this shit very, very seriously. Wow, yeah. So when you're going up the bridge, you have no idea what's on these levels. I didn't, at least. And, you know, you see this stuff going on.

You're like, wow, this stuff must be heavy. Like, if they're protecting it this much, it must be, like, serious. And they put you through the ringer. You have to get tons of security checking to make sure that you're safe to, I mean, safe under their eyes to actually read the materials. And then when you finally read them, I was 18 when I did it. And I was so brainwashed into it. I was so indoctrinated.

I had pretty much no choice but to believe all the shit that I read in it. Now, you know, I think it's completely ridiculous. But at the time, I actually really truly believe that that was the answer. I was like, oh, okay. I was, I was nothing, it, it was nothing like it that I had ever expected to do it. And then the thing is, is that once you read it, then you have to go in session and you have to do the auditing to fix the whole thing of what he said was the problem was. And it's a very complicated, very convoluted thing. It is.

So that's interesting, because, you know, we've heard when people get to the creation story to OT3 that people like Leah, She was like, oh my God, this is such bullshit. And then there's someone like you who was like, okay, I'm going to run with this. Like, you know, every religion has like a mythos or a mythology to it. I guess this is ours. So is that kind of what you went with when this whole story of Zeno, which I would love if you could like kind of tell us about if you don't mind this whole story of Zinu and the fathens and, oh, God. I know it's very convoluted. But again, it is.

We're a UFO podcast. We're used to that. Yeah, exactly. And also, too, by the way, the thing with Leah, I know that she first thought that it was bullshit, but again, she couldn't say anything because, again, you're not supposed to say anything negative. You're not supposed to disagree. And the OT3 materials, most of them are in Hubbard's handwriting. They are non-disputable. And by the way, all of the OT3 materials, you can find it on the internet now in his handwriting.

So they're not really that big of a secret anymore, but Scientology still pretends that they don't exist anywhere else outside of the confines of Fort Knox. But yeah, no, that's what I sort of believed. I was like, oh, well, if Elron Hubbard says that it is, then it is must be true. Because that's the thing that you were taught and you were indoctrinated into believing you can't dispute anything that he says. What's written is what's true. If he wrote it, then it must be true. He could have told you whatever he wanted to in the world. And you would have had to have, and that, and that was it.

And if you disputed it or if you had a problem with it, then you would go back to ethics and nobody wants to do that. So, of course, what do you do? You keep your mouth shut. So what is the creation story? Okay. Do you enjoy true stories of the supernatural from the people who experienced it? Well, then you might like my show, Jim Harold's Campfire. Hi, I'm Jim, and we've been doing the show since 2009.

And we talk about ghosts, cryptic creatures, UFOs, head scratchers, you name it. And you tune in and you might hear a story like this one. And as he was driving home, he encountered a shadow person who seemed to be dressed like a monk. I know that sounds very strange. But it was a solid black form. And it was wearing a hooded cloak tied at the waist with the cloak up. and it had glowing red eyes. He sees this thing coming out of a really teeny abandoned cemetery.

If you haven't tuned in, I hope you'll check us out. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever podcasts are heard, it's Jim Herald's campfire, and you can find it at Jim Herald.com. Thanks so much, and stay spooky. So basically what happened is that 75 million years ago, Earth and, is part of a galactic confederation of planets. And our planet, the original name for Earth is called TGiac. And TGiac Earth has been sort of a dumping ground for millions and millions and millions of years.

This is like the really, like the shittiest planet in the whole confederation. I think he said there were 76 or 77 planets or something. So there was a huge overpopulation problem with most of the other planets. So what Zinu decided to do is he, decided to fix the population problem. He gathered up billions and billions of people, aliens, and put them in these spaceships that he said look like DC8 airplanes, except they had rocket engines on them and not propellers. Nice. And so billions of these of these people, aliens, you know, aliens from different types of bodies and things like that, different types of creatures,

brought them all to Earth, blew them up in volcanoes, and then trapped them all. So now, Remember, Scientology's basic belief is that you are not your body. You are a soul. You are a spiritual being. And the word that Scientology uses for spirit is called a Thayton. So you're a Thaeton. You have a body and you have a mind. Those are the three different parts of man.

So all of these people that he brought to Earth and put them on the different volcanoes across Earth and blew them up with H-bombs, their bodies are dead, but the Thetons are still there. their souls are still there. So he figured out a way to trap all of these statins, and basically what he did is he boxed them up in boxes and compacted them to solve the overpopulation problem. So now as a result of that incident that happened 75 million years ago, everybody walking on this planet today, we are all composite creatures. So you, Ryan, have hundreds of thousands of Thetons that are stuck to you and

stuck to your body. I knew it. Right. So every single person walking around is not just one Thayton. It's not just one soul. You have hundreds of thousands of Thadons that are stuck to you. So when you learn this in Scientology, that's the first thing you read is Hubbard tells you the whole story. It's like Zinu came in and he did all this stuff. And, you know, it's a very long and complicated process. I think that whole sequence of events where he blew them up in the volcanoes and stuff, it lasted for like months or something like that. I can imagine it's a very complicated process. Oh, yeah.

So then once you read that, then you go, okay, so now that I know that there's millions of people or hundreds of thousands of people that are stuck to me, what do I do? Hubbard had a solution for everything. You audit them. You have to audit each of the individual souls. This is how you handle it. So using basic Scientology technology, you go through one by one throughout your entire body and around your body to find each of these statins and you talk to them, figure out what their

problem is, and get them to leave by using basic Scientology processes. That in itself takes a very long time. So starting from OT3 all the way up through OT7, that's the only thing that you're doing is you is you're auditing these statins that are stuck to you to get them to leave. And what Hubbard said was is that each of these statins that are stuck to you are negative emotions and pains and diseases and all of these other things that he originally was talking about in diionetics. He's like, oh, well, the whole reason why people get sick is because of the reactive mind. And then as the years went on, he was like, actually, it's not true. It's because of these statins that are stuck to you.

So the more satans you get rid of, it's so insane when I say it, like whenever I tell the story. Yeah. So basically he was saying, the more you audit these things. statins and the more the phatons that you get rid of off of yourself, the happier you'll be, the less problems you'll have and all this other stuff. So that's the, in a nutshell, that's the basic gist of what you learn and what you do on OT3. Okay. All right. Well, thank you. That was, I mean, it, it sounds very convoluted, but it actually, like, when you hear it like that, I'm like, okay, so he basically took his original thoughts and ideas and applied this very science

fiction-esque slant to it all, which makes sense. So, I mean, so body fadens. They can, they're all over you. You're trying to get rid of them through auditing. So do they, once they're off of you, do they go to someone else or can they come back? How does that all work? I will read you the exact thing that Hubbard wrote about that. Oh, okay. In one of the policies that he wrote on the OT3 course, he says, body phatons are just thaitons that are stuck to you. When you get rid of one, he goes off and possibly squares around,

picks up another body or admires daisies. So basically what he's saying there is that they can basically do whatever they want. I see. Because they've been stuck to you for 75 million years, this is the first time that they're actually like on their own and a single phaeton. So he could go and find another body because, you know, Scientologists believe in past lives. And we've all lived, you know, millions upon millions upon millions of lifetimes and all this other crap. So he could go pick up another body.

He could go sniff the daisies. He can basically do whatever they want. So it's almost like a threat that it could return if it wants to. And the cycle just keeps going in a way. It could be. But at the same time, Hubbard said that like a regular Thayton, If you do Scientology auditing on someone, you know, could be you or could be me, and it's supposed to make them better.

It's the same thing with a body thing, one of the guys that are stuck to you. So if you audit them, so if you audit them on Scientology, it's the same thing. They're going to be a little bit better than they were before, and they're going to hopefully not get back into that vicious cycle all over again. Okay. So, Joey, being that you were like one of the prime auditors, I've heard rumors that auditing sessions are recorded. Is this true? If so, why were they being recorded? Yes, absolutely.

That's terrifying. It really is terrifying because when you're getting auditing, especially during like the security checking, you're telling these guys, as they did to me, they're telling me their deepest, darkest secrets. Right. Like in full detail, their most personal thoughts, really embarrassing things that they've done,

like really, like secretive stuff. And the reason why that they say that they do all those, recordings of everything is for the purpose of the auditor so like when I used to audit at the big blue at the big blue buildings down on Sunset Boulevard every single time that I would go into one of the little auditing rooms to take someone in a session everything was recorded so then the person who's in charge of the auditing they call them the case supervisor they have a little look-in system where they can they have a TV in their office and they look in on everybody's sessions, they can just kind of pop in, you know, by pressing a button. They say it's for

the purpose of correcting the auditor if the auditor made a mistake, which is true, because sometimes I would do something that was technically not correct. And they would say, like, oh, Joey, the session that you did yesterday, I watched the video and you forgot to do this, or you forgot to do that, and then I would be sent to correction. But the real reason that they want to do it is so that they have a record of everything that the person ever says. Because they, auditors, write everything down. Whenever you go into a session, you're supposed to write down to everything that you do and everything that the patient says. But it's mostly shorthand. But if you have it on video and if you have a sound recording of it, there's no dispute as to what happened and what they said.

Because the auditor can write down anything that they want. And if there wasn't a video, then nobody would really ever know. That's a good point. Yeah. But this was the person being audited, they were not aware, right, that this is being monitored or recorded. Correct. Right. See, that to me, it just, it's making me envision all these times I went to confession in my Roman Catholic Church. And I did tell them things that nobody on this earth would know.

And that terrifies me to think that, whoa, my religion could have been doing the same thing. No, and really embarrassing shit, too. It's like people told me some really, really personal thing. And the other thing too is that over the years, since I have left Scientology, a lot of the cameras, because I still talk to people that are still in Scientology, they're just kind of laying low under the radar. They would never speak out about it because they're obviously afraid of losing their family or friends. But they've called me and told me things like now the can't, because before the cameras, you could kind of see them and you sort of knew that they were there. But now they're hidden. Like they literally hide cameras in like a, I think at the, at the, the church of Scientology, the one that's in Florida, the one in Clearwater, the huge one.

They hide, they hide the cameras behind a photo frame on the wall. And there's a microphone. It's hidden underneath the table. Back in the day when I was doing my auditing in the mid-90s, like there was a full-on camera there that we could, that, that everybody could see. There was no question about it. But now it's completely hidden. Oh, well, you know, we don't want to distract the, we don't want to distract the patient, you know, while they're getting their auditing. But it's like if you're a new Scientologist or if you have no auditor training whatsoever, you wouldn't know that the thing was being recorded at all.

Right. So. Right. And it's scary. It is scary. And, you know, we kind of assume why they were doing that when when someone does decide to try to leave the church, you know, you have so much shit on. people. They have so much dirt on them. Yeah. So much, so much dirt on them. I want to get to that later on on with some of the celebrity members, but, but yeah. Okay, yeah. Well, we'll save that for the second part.

But, okay, so the creation story. So Zinu, Kayens, is there anything else within Scientology that involves UFOs or aliens? Or is this kind of the one mythology that Scientology stands by? There's actually a lot, a lot more. Really? Okay. Yeah, you learn about, because remember in Scientology, you learn very, very early on of Hubbard's concept of Thaitons and, you know, you yourself are a Thayton and you have past live, stuff like that. And then there's a particular, there's a particular series of books in Scientology. They're called the Research and Discovery volume books. It's like, I think it's a volume of like seven or eight of them.

there are transcripts of a bunch of lectures that Hubbard did in the early 1950s and going into like 1960 something where he talks about there's a lecture i forget the name of it but i but i remember very very vividly what he was talking about and you know he's just casually giving a lecture to people and he's like oh well you know because he believed that he could leave his body and you know travel to different places and things like that you know kind of like teleportation and things like that or um uh So he was talking about leaving his body. And he was like, oh, well, you know, yesterday I went up to the Van Allen belt. And I was just sitting there just looking at the stars and stuff like that. The Van Allen belt is that, it's that layer of radiation that surrounds Earth, I think is what it is. Okay, okay. And so he was talking about, yeah, I was sitting up at the Van Allen belt and like, God, do you guys have any idea how warm it is up in space? It was really, really weird.

And then he was telling the story and then he had a fleeting thought of like how he would like to go to Mars and then he like popped like immediately popped him, went straight to a, an alien army base on Mars. And so these are things that he said in his lecture. So when you're a kid or when you're a young person in Scientology, reading about these stories and like he was talking about this thing called the, the fifth invader forces. And there are an army of aliens that had a base on Mars.

And apparently what he told, I don't remember. the exact story, but basically what he said was is that these different waves of these alien forces, they would take the criminals and they would take the bad people from other planets and they would dump them on Earth. So he called Earth like basically a prison for the whole galaxy. And we were sort of like the last dumping ground for people that they were trying to rehit, criminals that they were trying to rehabilitate on other planets and things like that. Interesting. So it's like Australia almost. Almost, yeah, so Earth is like the galaxy's Australia.

But again, none of that stuff is confidential. You can go into, excuse me, you can go into any church of Scientology and read about the Fifth Invader forces. And then he, and then the thing about the Van Allen belt, he talks about having bodies in Pond where you have like a twin or an exact copy of a body. But it's an alien body on a very, very distant planet. You can go in and read all that stuff. He doesn't hide it. You take preclear after preclear, after preclear, after preclear, you put them on e-meters, you try to run them, you try to do this, you try to do that straight on through,

and you find in each and every case you're finding the phenomenon of entities, bodies in pawn, communications, spaceships, other planets, locations, beingness in other states, and all of this, and you find this to be a consistent condition, you have fulfilled this definition of the mask universe. The thing you don't learn about are the body phatens in Zinu. Those you don't learn until OT3. I see. But there's a lot of stuff about aliens and UFOs and Mars bases and things like that.

And I thought it was really cool when I was a kid. I was like, oh, this is so cool. I want to leave my body and just pop up to the Mars base and things like that. You know, I was like, this is awesome. Dude, I mean, I was just going to say that as a person interested in all this stuff since a very early age, I would have eaten that shit up knowing like this was actually part of like the head of my religion. That would have like I would have been a Scientologist till the day I died knowing that I could possibly go to Mars. And I will be honest with you. There are people in the UFO community right now touting those same stories that they worked on a base on Mars and Obama with.

there with them and they had to fight this intergalactic. I'm not kidding you. And people actually believe this stuff. So when I hear you talking about Zinu and the Thaitans and these stories of, you know, alien doppelgangers, it sounds crazy to the layman person. But these are stories I hear every single day from people who claim that this actually happened. So there's a lot of interconnectedness between Scientology and the UFO field, obviously.

So this is why I'm still happy. to hear you telling me all this. It's crazy. It doesn't sound as crazy as you think. Well, and then also the other thing that I was going to say, too, is that when I was auditing people, you know, most of the time, we encourage the patient to go into a past life to talk about, you know, whatever they want to talk about. It's usually like some sort of a traumatic thing that happened.

So like in Scientology, there's this, there's this concept of like, if you had something that happened to you, like, you, like, I was auditing someone and they were like, oh, I got into a car accident the other day. And then, you know, we talk about that and we go over it and talk about the pain and, you know, like, what did the car smell like? What did the, and we tried to get details of it because Hubbard believed that if you examine something in very, very close detail, you kind of get a, you kind of get a relief from the negativity of it. And then you go earlier, okay, when was an earlier similar time you got into a car accident? And we would go back and we would go back and we'd go back. And eventually, people would go back into their past lives. So I'd say, like,

okay when was an earlier similar time you got into a car accident oh well you know in the in the 1850s I was in a woman's body and we were in a buggy accident okay tell me about an earlier similar and we would go back really far to the point where they to the point where they would say something like you know 74 billion years ago I was on this weird planet and we were like these these weird like alien bodies and I remember we were in this some sort of like a roundish vehicle and like crashed into an asteroid when we were flying through space or something like that. So I would hear these stories all the time. They were people's personal stories. Obviously, interpretations of what they thought they did in a past life. But it's like it was a very, it was a very, uh, uh, alien and

UFO sort of based concept. Was that, um, before OT3? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because when you, because before you do the OT levels, you're required to be able to, easily go into your past life incident. Oh, okay, okay. Because by the time you get all of the earlier auditing before you get to clear, you would have already gone, you know, past life in your auditing many, many, many times. Gotcha. It's interesting that you would hear those stories before they learned like the creation story, you know? Right, right. But again, all of the earlier works when Hubbard talked about, you know, like in just sort of like basic Scientology book, There was a book that they stopped publishing a couple of years ago.

I don't know why. It's a book called Have You Lived Before This Life? And it's stories of people who talked about when they went back in past lives and stuff like that. So it's a very common concept for early on Scientology people who are studying this stuff. So they introduced the concept of going past lives. And then, of course, he talks about aliens and stuff in the non-confidential lectures. So you get kind of those ideas stuck in your head. And eventually when you get, you know, start going up the bridge and start getting more and more auditing, you're like, okay, this is a regular thing, though.

Okay. Gotcha. So there was, there could be some influence early on before even reaching the creation story. Yeah. A lot. Okay. So, okay. So during your OT3 level, you decided to become a member of the C.org.

And so could you, I know it's tough, man. I know. Stupid. No, it was stupid. Okay. Okay. You said it. I didn't. But again, this is your life and this is the navigation you took, having been born into this. So it might sound stupid to a lot of people, but this was your life. So could you explain to us what the Seorg is, how it's different from just, you know, being a regular Scientology member? And what sort of like the day-to-day experience was in the Sea Org? Okay. Okay. So the C-organization was developed by Hubbard in 1967 or 1968, I think.

And what he did is he got together a group of his most hardcore Scientologists and set out on the ocean. So the sea, that's why they call it the Seaorg. So he created his own little personal navy on this boat. And they sailed around the Caribbean and they sailed around the Atlantic area for probably about a decade, I think. And basically what the Seorg is is that it's the clergy of Scientology. Okay. So if you were going to join the priesthood or if you were going to become a nun, it's sort of the same thing as joint, like you would be joining the highest ranks of Scientology.

And as part of your commitment to the Seorg, you're supposed to sign a contract for one billion years. So in the C.org, the concept is that you work in the Corg and you dedicate your entire life to Scientology and many other future lifetimes. And he says it very, very clearly. He's like, when you die, you have a. 21 year break or 21 year leave of absence from the seorg and then when you go and you pick up a new body and that body gets to grow up a little bit after 21 years you're supposed to come back another another interesting thing about the seorg people that don't normally know about this is that there's a little bit of an alien twist to it too hubbard hubbard believed that because i told you before

that earth was a dumping ground for like the shittiest people in the galaxy prison planet yeah The prison planet Hubbard believed that most of the Seargue members that ended up joining the Seorg and did very well. They were what he called the loyal officers. So the loyal officers are the ones that defeated Zinu back in the day 75 million years ago. Ooh, okay. It's all connected now. Yes, correct. So all of the people who were running the Galactic Confederation, they didn't like Zeno.

And he did this really horrible thing and he killed a bunch of people. So they ended up figuring it out and they captured him. So those he called them the loyal officers. So he believed and he told Searig members this, that they were the reincarnated loyal officers. So we were like, oh my God, I feel like a like a like a king in a castle. I'm like the creme de la creme of the entire galaxy. It's crazy. So yeah, so that's what the Seorg is.

You sign a billion year contract and you work, live and sleep and eat on Scientology. property 24-7, you don't get any days off. You barely get time off to see your family or like take time to, you know, for anything. And you pretty much just slave away there for as until you die or until you decide to leave. Okay. So slave away. So like what what was like a typical day in the Sea Orr then for you? So for me, um, when I was an auditor, uh, the auditors and the and the people who actually deliver the courses, they have a little bit of an easier. schedule, as opposed to the people that just do like the office worker, like the administration management stuff. So it was usually wake up at about 6.30 or 7 a.m. Eat breakfast if you have time.

You have to get to your morning meeting. They call it a muster because that's a military term. It's like a muster where you stand in a line and, you know, they do like a little roll call thing. By 8 a.m. or 8.30, you're there and you do your morning meetings and like your orders of the day are given. And then for me as an auditor, you go into the area where you do the auditing and you audit all day long. You take a 30 minute break for lunch, a 30 minute break for dinner, a couple more meetings and possibly some more meetings at night. And then you go to bed by 1130 or midnight, if you're lucky. So this was all day long. So you weren't going to school or anything during all this?

No, no. Well, by that time, because when I had joined the Sear, I was 18 or 19, I had already graduated high school. Okay, okay, okay. Yeah, I used that term graduated loosely because I went to a Scientology run school, which was not a accredited school, so I technically didn't actually graduate high school. Oh, okay. So they had their own educational system. They did.

Okay. They did. But anyway, so back to the Seorg. And then so you get very, very little sleep at night. You're working all day, seven days a week for 50 bucks a week. But all of your room and board is paid for. The food was shitty. where I lived in the dormitories in that big blue building,

it's shared college-style dormitories, except that would kind of compare it to prison-style dormitory. Wow. Because it's like 15 to 25 people per room in triple bunk beds. The building is filthy. There's one bathroom on every single floor. I mean, I'm sure they've renovated it by now, but when I was there,

there was one bathroom on the floor that I lived. I lived on the seventh floor of the main building, the one that has the actual Scientology sign on it. Okay, okay. There was one bathroom for the entire seventh floor and only two shower stalls. So every morning, it would be like, I'd have to wait like 30 or 40 minutes just to take a shower if I was lucky. Yeah. And it was very regimented while you were there as well.

Like, were they strict? Very, very. You have to show up for every meeting and every muster. If you're late, you get sent to ethics. If you don't show up, you get sent to ethics. There's cameras everywhere. I remember a friend of mine who was in the same working in the same organization with me. She and I were kind of best friends at the time.

And every Tuesday or went, no, I'm sorry, it was every Wednesday for lunch. It would be chili and cornbread, which I thought was disgusting and looked like a pile of shit. She hated it too. So we would try to sneak off of the base to go down the street to Wendy's or like go to the place. There was a place right up the street called Los Burritos and like go to. get a burrito. I think that's still there. It's still there. Yeah. It's still there. It's, yeah, it's right on sunset. And we would have to do it without getting caught. I was one of the lucky ones because I didn't grow up in this year like she did. So I had a car. Most of your members don't have cars. Most of your members don't have driver's licenses. Most of them don't have bank accounts or anything. But anyway, that's a separate thing. So we, so we would have to sneak off and they have cameras everywhere and they have security guards roaming around on bicycles constantly 24-7. Oh yeah. I've been down. there are few times. Yeah, so we would have to like run to the parking structure and make sure that there

were no security guards. And she would kind of keep watching. We would have to like run and go grab our food, scarf it down and come back and be on time because we only had a 30 minute window for lunch. If it, if we were lucky, sometimes we, sometimes we didn't take a meal break at all. Because I was still auditing someone. You can't just arbitrarily end the session in the middle of the thing. Right.

to finish whatever you're doing. So it was very, it was very, very regimented. And there were pretty much no freedoms to kind of do anything or whatever we want. I think in the four years that I was in the Corg, I probably took maybe five or six days off total in that entire time. Wow. So, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, it was a, it was a pretty shitty time. It was a very shitty. Okay.

So I can only imagine four and a half years of your life just sort of. gone at that point. And you did mention, like, your whole family were members of Scientology. So, um, were they, were you, like, reporting back to them, like the state and condition you were in while you were there at all? No, you're not allowed to. Anything that happens in, anything that happens in the Seor, you're not allowed to talk about outside of the Seor. Because when you have people who are in science, Scientology, you can just be a Scientologist and be a regular human, like, you know, you can have a job and live in your own house. and do, but you take Scientology courses and you get Scientology auditing.

When you're a Searg member, that's when you like jump onto the ship and like work for them full, full time. It's a Hubbard Guidance Center fully representative of the gateway to the top of the bridge. And each of the onboard counseling rooms is the embodiment of technical perfection, down to the last detail. While as for training, it's the course rooms on the main deck and a deck, configured to transport hundreds at a time ever closer to total spiritual freedom. And since this ship is the threshold to the upper levels of Scientology, it's all specifically geared for those on the ascent to the highest states. In all, the freewind stands at the forefront of a growing worldwide movement towards spiritual advancement,

transporting Scientologists to new realms of freedom every day. But they made me sign so many NDAs and confidentiality agreements. You're not allowed to talk about anything. I mean, when I was physically beaten when I was in the Seorg and I couldn't tell my parents about it. I've had lamps thrown up, thrown at my face. I had this one older Seorg member who was like one of the most senior people on that entire base. She would come up behind me and smack me on the back of my head, open, like open hand. just be like, why are your statistics down?

Because statistics is a huge part of it. I mean, she and just really horrible physically and verbally abusive. I've seen C-R members get into fights. I saw them beat up an old man because he refused to do an all-nighter one night, which happens a lot. Sierra members stay up all night and do these crazy things because they have to meet their deadlines and they have to do it because if their statistics are down from the previous week, then it's all over. then they go get sent to ethics and they're punished for it. And this old guy, he was in the Seorg since Elwyn Hubbard started the Seerog in the 1960s.

You know, he's like a 70-year-old or 75-year-old man. And he was exhausted and it was midnight and he wanted to go to bed. And of course, a younger, much more strong Seargue member comes up and said, don't you dare go to bed. And then he tried to push him out of the way and then he knocked him in the eye. Wow. And that was a regular everyday occurrence when I was in the Seorg. and it was horrible. I saw people, Hubbard,

Hubbard invented this thing called throwing somebody overboard. So when he was on the, when he was on the boat in the 1960s, when an auditor screwed up and did something that was technically wrong, he created this overboarding ceremony where they would take the auditor and they would have like a little ceremony on the side deck of the ship and say, you know, I throw you and your mistakes into the ocean deep. And when you come out of the water, may you arise a free man and free from your mistakes or something like that. It was like this weird thing that he used to do.

And they would literally throw people over the side and dump them into the water as like a punishment for screwing up as an auditor. So then when I was in the Seorg at the big blue base, that's not a ship. They didn't have an ocean. So they would stand people up. They would get all of the auditors and all of the technical staff in a group. And the person who screwed up would stand in front of everybody and say, I screwed up as an auditor. I did this and this and this wrong. And then the ethics officer would spray them with a hose in their full uniform as like a

punishment. How demeaning. That was, oh, it was so demeaning. And I felt so bad for the poor woman because she's like this 50 or six year old woman. She's been in this year or forever. And she has to stand there and be punished in front of all these people. And it wasn't until many years later that I realized it wasn't just punishment for her. It was because they wanted to just scare the shit out of us.

It's not for them. It was for us because they were like, You see, you see what happens if you fuck up. Right. And it's, it's again, coming back to that idea that it's all based on control, like, through fear, you know? There's, like, there's, it sounds to me, like, there's very little reward to ever come out of this, quote, unquote, religion.

It's all about the things you've done wrong. And the minute you think you've achieved something, they find something else that you did wrong. That's right. It's frustrating the hell out of me, just hearing all this, man. No, no, it's, I mean, it makes me, it makes me red in the face when I think about it. I mean, it's, it's horrific, the stuff that people had to suffer through this thing. Not just me.

Like, I feel bad for the other people. Right. And then, you know, you become complacent. And I'm sure, like, there were times that you had to turn someone in or, you know, stuff like that. Yeah. It's just this thing going on in your psyche constantly. Yeah. And like you said before, it's like that it's the snitching culture.

And we were all complacent. Okay, so snitching culture. Let's definitely touch on that. How and why did you leave the C-org? I know this is probably a tough one, but yeah, let's go through that. No, no, no. No, it's, it's, I can, I can definitely talk about it now and not and not be freaked out about it. Awesome.

Thank God. So, yeah. So for those of you who don't know, I am gay. And I hid the fact that I, well, I tried to hide it. It's kind of hard to hide. But I tried to, you know, for years when I was in Scientology, because Scientology is very homophobic. They do not allow anybody that's openly gay to continue past clear, basically, on the bridge to total freedom. And they think it's an aberration. They think it's an abomination. They think all kinds of things about it.

So I was hiding this fact for a very, very long time. And then while it was in the Seorg, I developed a crush on another Seward member who was also a man. And we had a, we had a very emotional relationship. We never really touched each other. We never did anything physically gay. But there was a lot of flirting and there was a lot of, you know, like secret, secret note writings and just a very, very heavily emotional. And it was amazing for me because I had never actually experienced anything really that gay before. So I was very happy about it, but we both knew that we had to keep it a secret. And then eventually they found out about it because of my mother. My mother snitched on me.

Really? Yes. So when you're in the Seahorgs, you're not allowed to have a cell phone. So what did I do? I used to call this other boy. I'm not going to say his name because he, well, I'm not going to say his name. Okay. So he, no, no.

So he, so I used my, because luckily I came from a very wealthy family. And I was one of the lucky Sear members. I didn't have to worry about, you know, starving. and I had a car, blah, blah, blah. But I also had a prepaid phone card. And this was back in like 96 or 97. No, I'm sorry, I was like 98. And they had pay phones inside of the churches of Scientology.

So every couple of days I would call the guy that I had a crush on, but I used my parents' phone card. So one day, my mom, I guess she got the bill for the thing and she sent it to the ethics officer. She sent the phone bill to the ethics officer and was like, hey, you should check into Joey and see, like, he's calling the same number for the last, like, five months or six months, because he, he was in Florida at the time. He was at the, uh, the Clearwater Church of Scientology.

So I was calling Florida almost the exact same time every single day because it was during our dinner. It was during my, uh, lunchtime and during his break time, I think is, I think is what it was. Okay. So anyway, so she snitched on me. So then the ethics officer came in and she, uh, was like, you're going to get a security check. And then they put me in session. they put me on the e-meter and then they had someone pounding at me for like hours being like you know what is this thing like why are you calling blah blah why are you you making these phone

calls so finally i had to confess and then they did the same thing on florida and then that's how i got in trouble so they found out about the gay situation and um they uh continue to do security checks on me asking me all kinds of very harsh and very graphic questions like specifically asking for you know the sexual stuff like did you ever have anal sex with such as name did you ever have oral sex with such as name did you ever touch so and so and so's names penis did so and so ever touch your like I mean like really and I kept telling him like no no no we never touch each other we never touch each other and they didn't believe me so they kept going at it and they kept like screaming at me and trying to get me to confess. And then finally, after, I don't know how long it was,

it was like two months of that on like an every single day basis. And all the while, they had a security guard watching me 24-7. And I was put into a windowless room on the seventh floor of the main building. And the security guard would sleep in the room with me. But he put his bed against the door at night so that if I tried to escape, I would wake him up. The only time I was allowed to leave the room was to go to the bathroom, which I also had to have an escort to go with me, or to walk across the street to get my security checks. So that lasted for about two months. And then eventually they were like, you are gay. You are not allowed to be in the Seagre anymore. We're kicking you out. And then they handed me a bill for $40,000 and then

kick me out. Okay, okay. So they kick you out. And then I've heard, this is what's called the freeloader debt, right? Yes, exactly. So when you're in the C-organization, you get all of your courses, your training, and you're auditing for free. What they don't tell you is that if you ever decide to leave the C-org, they've been keeping track of all of the things that you've done during your stint in the C-org. So even though you take those courses for free, they keep a track of everything.

And if you ever do decide to leave, then they hand you a bill. And they're like, oh, by the way, you owe us money for all the stuff. Which, of course, I think legally is complete bullshit because they can't act. It doesn't actually affect your credit or anything like that. It's just if you want to ever continue in Scientology, if you want to be a member in good standing, you have to pay your free letter debt. So stupid me, I paid it. Well, actually, my dad paid for it because my dad basically was like, you know, I'm really pissed off that you left the Seorg and I can't believe you like did all these things. so you're going to come work for me in the family business and I'm going to pay your

free load of debt but you're going to work it off. No, was he, I mean, because he is a prominent member and it has been for life. Obviously, he was, he was disappointed, but he was the kind of father who would help you out. He was, yeah. And did he know that this was all because you had essentially been forced to come out? Yes, because they had the, uh, some of the senior. ethics officers or the senior ethics people had pulled my parents in and had a meeting with them on the side without my knowing about it and told them everything. They were like, so Joey did this

and Joey did that and we're kicking him out and this is why and we're just letting you know. Because they had to make sure to keep them on board because if they left, that would be a huge meal ticket for them that they would have lost. I see. And they needed to keep them happy, You know, because most of the big donors in Scientology can get away with a lot of shit because they donate so much money. And this was, and this was one of the things where they did not want to, they didn't want to lose them as Scientologists. Yeah. So my dad was like, all right, I'm going to fix this. You're going to come work for me at the gallery and you're going to work your way out of it.

And I'm just going to give them the $40,000 and then we'll call it a day. I was like, okay, I guess so. Cool. So, yeah, so this is, you start working for your dad at the gallery, and then this is where your story really amps up, man. Oh, yes, it does. Yes, it does. And we're going to cover that in part two.

That is it for part one of this two-part series, breaking the billion-year contract of Scientology. I hope you'll join me next week to hear all about how Joey testified in federal court about what he experienced in the church. and the infamous Sea Org, why he finally decided to leave, and what life is like on the other side of deep programming from a brainwashing cult.

We'll also talk about the church's new and mysterious leader, answer many listener questions, and so much more. That's next week on Somewhere in the Skies. Please take a few moments to subscribe, rate, and review the show wherever possible. It helps tremendously. For Apple users, Apple Podcasts is always the best option. But for my Android users, I have not forgotten you. Check us out on pocketcasts, podcast addict,

Google Play, castbox, and so much more. We're on Twitter at SomewhereSkies and Instagram at SomewhereSkies pod. All past episodes, news, articles, and contact information is all at the official website, Somewhere in the skies.com. Be sure to check out our merch store at T-Public and search for the Somewhere in the Skies store. That's T-E-E-E-Public.com. I'll see you here next week, and remember, keep your feet on the ground, but never stop searching somewhere in the skies. Somewhere in the skies is produced by Third Kind Productions in association with the Entertainment One Podcast Network. To learn more, visit Entertainment Onepodcast.com.