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All right, well, welcome to another Fair Game podcast. Hello, Mike Lee, how are you? Good.

We have another amazing and special guest.

Yes, we do. Like someone who I have recently been on his podcast, so this is this is turnabout now.

Hi, ETEC, it's wonderful to have you on with us today. Yeah, it's fabulous to be here.

And I can get you back for being on my podcast. Was that the deal? You do my podcast. I'll do your podcast, but I won't podcast my work.

That's how it works in this world. And John, what is the podcast? What's the name of it at John?

Atack Family and Friends on YouTube and various podcast channels.

OK, and what is it about? Well, it started out being about psychological manipulation mainly and how to avoid it, and then it sort of wandered off into talking about Scientology quite a lot.

Well, how can you not how can you not? Because it's such an incredible subject and it's about novels I've written and paintings I've made and music I'm involved in with my kids. It's a family channel. Oh, great family friend, you know. Love it.

Good. I hope people you get some listeners on this, but. Yeah, so. Yeah. So, John, thank you for being with us.

Why don't you tell us your your Scientology story, how you got involved, how long you were in Scientology. I was 19 years old, I came home from a tour in the south of France, was playing drums and found that my girlfriend disappeared and it turned out that she was running off to New Zealand with one of our friends, as people do. And I got very upset and being abandoned. And somebody had a friend of mine had taken a copy of Hubbard Science of Survival at the library because he was a big fan of the incredible string band.

And then he found he can read this book. And I ended up reading it and I walked in from there.

I was involved for nine years, always as what is called public, never on stuff. So I wasn't humiliated or abused. And so far I've yet to meet anybody else. That's truthful.

Right. Right. Yeah. You seem to be a very rare person who is.

Yeah, well well, John, I got to say, a little later on, the humiliation and abuse began.

Yeah. And you had some personal interest in not Mike. Exactly.

I was going to say that I guess we should bring this up later.

But I really do want to make a point of this, because, Mike, you you guys were not friends. You guys were not you were going after John later in his and.

Very much so. Yeah, very much so. Yeah.

So that I even went all the way to his house in Nottingham with Warren McShane to put the squeeze on John or attempt to put the squeeze on him unsuccessfully.

But there was a lot of a he was, he was for a time a a definite high on the hit list of the Office of Special Affairs and RTC because of his involvement with the, quote, independent movement and the, quote, theft of the the nots materials and various other things. But we're like really jumping ahead of ourselves at this point.

Yes. Yes, you are, Mike. And you're using a lot of you're using a lot of Scientology nomenclature that people don't understand. You said RTC. Nobody knows what that is. No one knows what Naz is.

And so people are tuning out. You hear, Leah. All right. And I could interrupt you under control.

And the technology center is RTC, David Miscavige, his organization that is at the sort of top of the Scientology hierarchy and is supposedly responsible for maintaining the purity of L. Ron Hubbard, quote, technology and Knot's is the level on the Scientology Bridge to total freedom that is up at the top where you've paid a lot of money and spent a lot of time to get there. And you.

I'm not that's that's good enough.

You know, the first thing that I realized in writing a book about the history of Scientology, let's some of these people a piece of blue sky, was that reading the books that already existed in there already, about 14 of them then that you had to avoid the words because otherwise you were going to spend forever explaining what new era Dianetics for operating Satan's was or something like that. Right, right. Exactly. A language jungle with two 600 page dictionaries to confuse you coming from a man who said that you would harm people if you had a misunderstood word.

You know, words, right? Exactly. There is giving them to you, right.

Well, you know, Scientology is as cults do have their own nomenclature, their own dictionaries. And you have to learn a whole new language.

And there's nothing, nothing like Scientology out there in terms of the amount of terms that Hubbard redefined. And he then wrote propaganda by redefinition of words, explaining how you manipulate people by redefining words or words that he invented. And it's an incredibly clumsy language. Isn't that Scientology's? It's it's about devotee and Q&A and all of these.

And it's so funny when I explained, like, whatever it is to people, like, you know, in the real world, you know, they are always like, oh, my God, it's an amazing word.

I love that, you know, like as a joke, they they start to use it.

But so, John, now that you mention the book. So you did write a book called The Day. Yeah. So a piece, a piece of Blue of Blue Sky.

Yeah. And the unexpurgated version is called Let's Sell These People a Piece of Blue Sky. There's still a rogue publisher publishing the original edition, which there are 60 passages that we had to paraphrase because of a strange ruling in the US. Now they're all back in and about another 40 things from Hubbard's private letters, harassment directives that he wrote this kind of thing.

And where can people get your book? It's available on Amazon and on Kindle and. And as always, I shall have a link to that on my blog and at their game podcast, Dotcom.

Oh, you got it right, Mike. I guess I got it right for once, you're going to put it on your list of recommended reading this time. Yes, it's it's not there, John. It's not that cheap.

Oh, absolutely. I'm like, are you still bitter?

Well, I mean, are you still trying to attach, John, when you're not in Scientology anymore? You're being very covert about it now, even though you claim to be out. Why do you not have John's book? Yeah. On your level of harassment, isn't it?

I agree, John. It's so fucked up.

I'm seeking to destroy him utterly. Yeah. Covertly by not selling my book to people.

Michael, you list his damn book on your right course.

Of course. By the way, you might realize it wasn't, by the way, is my book on their.

Yes, OK, we're good. So, you bastard. It'll be out there before the end of this podcast.

It's got the list and I spent nine years in Scientology.

I was a public member. I did five of the operating thetan levels of the superhuman levels. There were only seven at that time. There are only eight now.

I have to say. Can I interrupt you again for one month, surely? Yeah.

I have to say, for somebody who was in Scientology, the short amount of time and when I say nine years, I mean for a relatively short time for a psychologist, because it takes most Scientologists their whole lives to get up to the confidential levels of Scientology in.

So that you did it in the nine years is pretty, pretty impressive.

Yeah, pretty amazing. But it was a lot it is a heck of a lot cheaper back then, you know, and I think they could have half a million dollar price tag has made it, you know, slightly less accessible. Right. I think, you know, I paid 2000 pounds for. Oh, well, actually, last time I was involved, my total expenditure was 9000 pounds in nine years. Oh, no way.

Wow. And so the reason why we're a little bit stunned by this information is because Scientology, for those who who claim it's just like any other religion might mention the bridge to total freedom, you guys can look at Scientology Bridge to Total Freedom and you'll see there's a pre-set steps that are required of all Scientologists.

They're not optional to be able to be in Scientology.

You have to pay in advance for your services, for your eternity. And so, like like John said, those prices only go up and they preset prices like any other business you have to pay in advance. And if you pay, you're forced to pay in advance.

You can't even walk into a counseling session without having seen what they call registrars, a.k.a. salespeople of Scientology. You're not allowed to walk into any auditing room counselling room of Scientology without having prepaid for that service. And they're paid in blocks. So if you pay in advance, what you're forced to do that and you decide to leave Scientology, by the way, you don't get that money back and they have to you have to sue them if you want your money back.

Even if you haven't used it, you have. Well, good luck.

Good luck. I wish that were true because there's another part, which is you have to sign a contract that says you will not sue and that you will take your your request to have your money back to a Scientology, quote unquote, arbitration, which is really just another Scientology procedure or a religious religious right.

A, it's a religious procedure. Right.

And you have to submit yourself to their, quote, unquote, justice where they will decide you don't deserve your money back. And that's the end of it.

Absolutely. Yeah. Yes. You'll be given a fair trial and then we'll hang you. Right.

It's one of those systems, you know, but but in Scientology, you are already found guilty if you're labeled a suppressive person and if you have spoken out against Scientology abuses and you already labeled an enemy.

So they're not even allowed to talk to you, they will literally cover their ears when you start talking.

That's how insane this this this farce is. But there is no such thing as a Scientology arbitration.

But anyway, so, so and by the way, good luck finding a lawyer, because how many hundreds of people over the years have contacted?

I'm sure you too, John contacted you saying, look, I have 40000 on account in a Scientology organisation or 10000, 20000, some one hundred thousand two hundred thousand. And I can't get my money back. And it would save my life just and they're not allowed to even contact the Church of Scientology because they've been labeled an enemy.

And the lawyers basically laugh and go.

It's going to cost me that much to even pick up the phone. What are you kidding me? Of fifty thousand dollars sitting there, I can't help you. You want to give me a million dollar retainer or try to help you out? And there are thousands and thousands of people who have. Hundreds of millions and sitting on an account in the Church of Scientology. So if a lawyer wanted to ever get a hold of an amazing case or the IRS ever wanted to do their jobs, they might want to look into that.

Anyhow, back to you, John. Sorry. Yeah, well, so worked, you know, I mean, I left Scientology, I trained I was a cluster auditor of Dianetics is the various things like this.

So you're a Scientology counselor as well? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. He uses the term that is otherwise used for an accountant, the auditor who will certainly audit your accounts for you. Yes. And as you said, I mean, when I got in, it was six pounds per hour, about ten bucks an hour. And by the time I left, it was 20 times that much. Nine years later, 120 pounds now. And in fact, most of what I spent, I spent in the last year that I was involved, but I left because I thought Hubbard had it gone, he was dead or he'd been taken over and we had to take Scientology out.

And about three months after I left, I left in October at 83, I had this package of material dumped on me, collected by a guy called Michael Lynn Shannon, and it had come via the Boston attorney, Michael Flynn to me. And it absolutely proved without doubt to me that Ron Hubbard was a liar. And I did a kind of shortcut that which I was surprised other people don't tend to do. He's a liar. He says honesty is sanity, therefore he's insane.

And this isn't the road to truth. And I it took me a few weeks, but I found myself in the middle of the independent movement, saving Scientology from the mother cult, the Church of Scientology, but not actually believing in any of it anymore. And my function became a bit like Mike's, except I was on the other side. I was defending the independence from Mike and others who are attacking them with no real interest anymore in Scientology itself, you know, in the history of it.

Well, let me just ask you this. So so you decide that you read something and you see that that that Hubbard and Scientology and Dianetics is a complete farce and lie lie full of lies and the psychotic I mean, the psychosis, the neuroses don't even know a label for Dianetics.

It was so insane. But and it's being it's a science of the mind is what it calls itself. And and it isn't any such thing. And Hubbard makes crazy claims, calling it a science.

And people believe that. I believed it. You believed it.

But so now you you you walk away from the Church of Scientology, but you still believe in Scientology and believe that people who believe in the technology of Scientology should be separate from the organization. Is that what you're saying?

Initially for a few months are really OK, but OK, hang on a second.

Now, Mike, can you explain to our listeners why that is not OK? Why can't because Catholics don't need to go to a church to pray. I mean, most people of real religions don't need to go into any place to actually call themselves whatever they're calling themselves. Why is Scientology different here, Mike?

Because like all good businesses, Scientology protects its intellectual properties, i.e. the trademarks and copyrights of Dianetics and Scientology and everything. And every term is trademarked. And every piece of writing by Hubbard is copyrighted.

And they enforce those copyrights vigorously because those copyrights are a source of revenue. And in order to use the materials of Dianetics and Scientology, one has to be authorized by the mother church.

OK, but that doesn't sound realistic.

But that doesn't sound bad, Mike, that somebody would try to to protect their intellectual properties.

Businesses do it all the time. Absolutely. So why is that the point?

This is this ontology is the first supposed religion to use the courts to protect its trade secrets. And just to amplify that, there are between two and 3000 trade in service marks registered by Scientology, including my favorite, the friendliest place in the world. You can't use that expression. It's actually in Florida, the friendliest place in the world where you're not talking about Disney World, talking about the flag land base.

We ought to be worried about the flood of flag land base. Yeah.

Gotcha. So the but but but further to to what you guys are saying, because it just sounds legit that they would be protecting their trademarks.

It's a Catholic saying you can't use the word Jesus. And I'm suing the Anglicans for using the word Jesus and saying that's our trademark. I'm sorry. You've got to call him something else.

Right. But the more you can't read the Bible more or have the Bible as a part of your practice, because we got that and we copyrighted it, yeah, you need to pass 10 percent of your income if you are going to read it.

Right. So let's say you believed in Scientology because like you said, Jane, you are a trained Scientology counselor. If you wanted to train somebody without paying, you know, like you said, a half a million dollars and you wanted to administer Scientology that you thought was helpful to another human being outside of Scientology, give it to them for free or charge them a very small amount of money for that service.

Scientology says you're not allowed to do that as a parishioner.

Ron Hubbard in 1955 wrote an issue called the Scientologist, a manual on the dissemination of material. And in it he talked about any practitioner who's not licensed. And he said, if possible, he said the law can be used very easily to harass, if possible, ruin him utterly. Anybody who practices without being franchised and licensed by the Scientology organization. And that's what they said. That was 1955. That's what they've set out to do with any competition since, except, of course, for David Miscavige has made deals.

So you have the Institute for Research into Metapsychology, for example, started by Dr. Frank Aboudi Sajko Bodey. He has a personal deal with David Miscavige, which sadly, I was on the edge of where they're allowed to practice Scientology without a license if they're registered with the Institute for Research into Metapsychology.

But and that's against all his principles. And that's a Scientology organization or affiliation that basically were people who it started with.

David Mayo, ex Scientologists, Savage Goodbody, setting up an organization that initially just delivered Scientology. And they decided that the upper levels were not good for you. And I remember arguing with them for weeks over this, trying to say, you've really got to stop telling. People are infested with little spirits and all of this kind of stuff. And they stopped doing that, the upper levels of the bridge. But they're probably still out there doing Dianetics and grades and things like that, believing that these are effective and helpful, which indeed they are not.

They're actually very dangerous ways of taking somebody's mind over of.

Of course. Now, I just the other I just have to say one thing here that I think is really important, which is, you know, this is the Fair Game podcast and the beginning of Fair Game. Came about because Hubbard wanted people who had, quote unquote, stolen his materials and were using them in an unauthorized fashion. Hmm. And making money out of it to be destroyed. And that was the start of the use of the term fair game.

It didn't exist before them.

Fair game is a term that originally meant to go after those who are practicing Scientology without authorization of Hubbard or the church.

And he very specifically says that you can destroy such people in the fair game issue that he wrote in 1965. But you lie to him, you can sue them. She like with them that then nonhuman, they don't have rights anymore. It's also very interesting that when he talks about the suppressive person that in the issue, he talks about that. He says the anti Scientologist, the antisocial personality. So he used a psychiatric term, antisocial personality or psychopath, and says that's the same as being anti Scientologist.

So if you have bad thoughts about Ron Hubbard, then you are an enemy of life. You are a destructive human being.

And that little link is made and should and should be destroyed, which is the viewpoint of all Scientologists that if if an enemy of Scientology passes away, they literally celebrate. Yeah, right.

Yeah, it's hideous. It's horrible. And I think the most probably most dangerous thing about Scientology is the eradication of compassion, but that it's a way of systematically taking away people's sympathy for other human beings and making them narcissistically selfish. And it works very well, you know, to do that. The problem is that that's not actually a prosocial thing that is anti-social in and of itself. So you're creating suppressive people.

I mean, especially when you're talking about the upper levels of Scientology, the confidential levels. Like you said, John, you learn in Scientology that you are infested with spiritual beings and and none of your thoughts are your own. And most of what you think and feel is from these spiritual beings that were your body is composed of and your thoughts are composed of all illnesses.

Are these these spiritual beings being in your body? And so when you get rid of them, supposedly through Scientology technology, you you cure yourself of cancer of any kind of any ailment.

So that's why Scientologists believe that they are healing themselves through.

I mean, that's pretty poignant accounts I've ever seen. Was Brian McKee talking at the Clearwater hearings in May 1982. He'd been a Scientologist for 24 years when his wife got cancer. He went down to the flag land base and said, what do we do about this? And they said, Oh, I'm sorry, we can't help you. But here's an address in Mexico for you to go to. It wasn't the Hoxsey clinic, but it was one of these clinics.

And he said when they got there, the surprise was that the waiting room was full of Scientology otes people who had got to the top of Scientology. And now because probably just because they hadn't gone to the doctor straight away, because they believed that they could use this, you know, mumbo jumbo to cure it, they'd ended up in the waiting room in this clinic in Mexico. Exactly.

And my point is always that Scientology is is giving medical advice and without I mean, is operating in a way calling Scientology a science. L. Ron Hubbard claiming that he was a scientist, that he's a decorated war hero. He sets himself up as a legitimate scientist and somebody who who went to college, he you know, you have this idea of this man that he has a bachelor's degree like. Right, Mike? That's the way L. Ron Hubbard sets himself out.

Yeah. You a physicist. Exactly.

And he has claimed these things about himself, that these things are proven. So by the time you get to the upper levels of Scientology, they literally tell you that you are curing illnesses, as he does in Dianetics. But people continue to say, well, it's faith, it's not faith. He's they're selling this. They're these things are not just give whatever you can. These are preset prices. The man sets himself up as as somebody who is a scientist who basically went to medical school, amongst other things, like you said.

And people, Scientologists believe that this man knows what he's talking about. And very often times when people get to the top of Scientology that the bridge called operating thetan a. 088 for short, they they usually find out that they that they're dying of an illness that that they could have possibly prevented or.

Cured and they often leave even without all of that, they realize that at the end of this whole thing that this was all a lie, because at the state level, basically, you're told that was all bullshit that you did.

You made it all up. Yeah, it's incredible and fabulous journey and the the nastiest sense of the word fabulous, it's a fable. It's it's a fabulous it's a series of lies. It was never a science. I interviewed a guy who was with Ron Hubbard when he wrote the book Dianetics, a guy called Don Rogers, whose appendix stayed in the book right into the 1980s. And he said when he was commissioned to write Dianetics The Modern Science of Mental Health, he turned to me and he said, you know, hypnosis is not very popular.

We're going to have to find another way to do this. So there was no research prior to the writing of Dianetics, Munson's mental health. He was hypnotizing people, putting them into trance. They were getting spontaneous remission from whatever was wrong with them for a few days or weeks. And then it came back. So all of his original supporters fell away because their asthma, their arthritis, whatever was wrong with them, of course, came back as it does, sadly, after most forms of faith healing.

And all he did was he grabbed hold of a technique that had been used by Joseph Broyer and then by Freud and relabeled it Dianetics. And you can find that technique in the Worcester, Massachusetts, lectures published before the First World War by Sigmund Freud, where he explains, you know, the whole thing of counting backwards and repeating words to people. It's all in there now. Then says, The problem with this technique is it doesn't make people better.

It does make them more dependent upon the counselor, which is what Scientology is exactly.

Because you because independent of the of the organization, which I think a lot of like I've come to the realization that some people that I know in Scientology should actually stay in Scientology because. No, and I don't mean to be funny because I actually realized they couldn't deal with life. They couldn't actually operate in the real world. They need people to tell them how to think and what to do. And because it's devastating when you leave, I don't care how long you've been in, but if you've been in most of your life and are in a bad relationship, dependent, you know, an abusive relationship, it is devastating regardless of what you receive.

That's what you know. And there is comfort in that. Right? There's some comfort in that.

So what you're saying is that that there are a lot of people in this world who are obedient and there are people in this world who demand obedience. I use the word authoritarian for such people. And the thing is that I would say that there are other cults they could belong to that are also authoritarian that would do them a lot less harm than Scientology. So, you know, there are all sorts of mild versions of cult out there.

Sure. And it won't harm me. The best thing is actually to face the real problem, which we all have, which is how obedient we are.

Right. And go out and grab a copy of Scientologist IRA Caliph's wonderful book, Intelligent Disobedience, which really does ask those questions about why we want to be obedient and how bad it is for us. But I agree with you, probably two thirds of the population are obedient. They you know, they will follow a leader and do what they're told. And I believe in democracy. I believe that's a really bad thing. You know, that we need to learn how to think and behave independently and become grown ups.

That's that's how I think of it. You know, I agree.

Rather than being children led around by a fake like Ron Hubbard.

I agree. The Therapy for Black Girls podcast is your space to explore mental health, personal development and all of the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves. I'm your host, Dr. Joy Hardan Brantford, a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia. And I can't wait for you to join the conversation every Wednesday. Listen to the Therapy for Black Girls podcast on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast.

Take care. Ready for the world of weird.

Buckle up for a wild ride as I Joshua P. Warren, the Wizard of Weird, bring you the strangest of the strange. Each week I'll have a power packed show with mind blowing experiments. You can do breaking news from the field, ancient secrets and so much more. All truly amazing. I'll be your personal guy behind the scenes of the bazaar. So get ready. You want hear this special? Can't do it anywhere else. Tune in each week to Strange Things with Joshua P.

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So back to the independent movement, so they aren't the only two points I wanted to make about that, John and Mike, is that it's it was it's the money. So you're not a lot they don't want to lose any kind of income. And if you're an independent movement, you're not giving any of that money to Scientology. And here's the more so. So it's money. It's it's what Mike said. The other important part is that Scientology practice outside of the organization loses control.

And once they lose control, they've lost everything. Because if you have an independent movement, you have people thinking for themselves. You have them looking on the Internet, you have them talking to people about Scientology, you have them watching news outlets. You have them just being free to talk to and be friends with whoever they want front, you know, connected to family members who want to help them and say, hey, I just want you to look at this information on Scientology.

Hey, you should go to the police with what happened to you, with your rape, with being molested as a child in Scientology. And so you're free to do those things when you're even practicing Scientology outside of its control. Because, again, I just want to remind everybody, Scientology is an everyday mandatory activity for parishioners, not just for people who are employed there. US parishioners were required to come into Scientology every day for two and a half hours minimum.

And if we were working, we had to make up the time on the weekends or when we had a vacation, we had to make up those two and a half hours by the end, you know, for the week. So we had to make up that time.

So every day they have a form of control on you and they put you on their lie detector test meter. I mean, and they ask you, have you looked at anything? Have you talked to anyone? If you get sick, they send you into an interrogation. Are you talking to anybody looking at anything? And they are constantly, constantly on you. If there's an independent Scientology movement, there's no control of information. And I think that's the most important point, don't you think, Mike?

Well, I think that that yes, and I think that that has another effect, which is sort of really the same thing, but just a slightly different way of looking at it, which is that control is exercised in Scientology very, very heavily. And Scientology, unlike a lot of other organizations, religious organizations or whatever you want to call them, is 100 percent fundamentalist. But most most organizations have a fundamentalist arm to them or a part that is like on the fringes that are the fundamentalists.

They're the people that will fly a plane into the World Trade Center or blow up a bus in in Tel Aviv or whatever with a bomb strapped to them. Those fundamentalists are not mainstream Muslims in Scientology. Everybody is a fundamentalist. You are required to be 100 percent dedicated, committed, brainwashed Scientologists. We'd rather have you we'd rather have you dead than incompetent and incapable. We'd rather like this is the the mantra of Scientology and this control is this us?

And then there's nothing in between where it or there is nothing.

And what the independent movement did was make a sort of a halfway house that people went, hmm, I hate what's going on here, but I don't want to lose my eternity.

Oh, I can probably salvage my eternity by going to the independent movement.

And droves of people left the the strict controls of Scientology because they thought that there was a kinder, gentler way. And that was extraordinarily damaging to the Organization of Scientology and the formation of David Mayo, the former big, big honcho of Scientology, auditing technology and and the expert that had been the personal counsel of L. Ron Hubbard.

His departure and the formation of the the independent movement for real at that time in the 80s is, in my view, the beginning of the decline of Scientology as Paul.

Based organization, right, and it started slipping away and then very shortly thereafter, the Internet came along and then it really started to go into a decline and it has not recovered since.

But that halfway house concept, which is the same thing you're saying about control, that halfway House concept was very, very big in the 80s.

And as John can attest, the Religious Technology Center, David Miscavige, his organization was absolutely obsessed with shutting this down, shutting down these little organizations that had grown up because it wasn't just David Mayo. There were other ones in other parts of the world and squashing them literally, they were to be destroyed because they were a threat to the control of Scientology over its people.

And a loss of control ultimately means loss of revenue. Yes, it's all goes hand in hand.

These things are all like we're talking about them as if the different things that they're intertwined and integrated and they can't be separated.

Right. So John Liese and John starts posting what? Well, I just started asking people what had happened to them, and I went and interviewed people, I mean, in terms of this conversation, one of the first people I contacted was Cheryl Vosper, who for 14 years been in Scientology, knew Hubbard and had written a book called The Mind Benders, which was an international bestseller. It sold 180000 copies in the late 60s. So I contacted him and said, hey, you know, this is this form of Scientology now that's not controlled by the organization.

You know, come along and talk to me. And I've got this wonderful letter back from Sarah, who I later came to know very well. And he said, I don't think that Scientology can work outside a fascist organization.

It's the first time I heard the word fascist applied to Scientology, which is, after all, a totally non-democratic organization. Right. And I think there's some truth to it that the independent movement that Mr Justice Laty ruling in the famous case in July 1984 and high court in London over the custody of two children, he said the independent movement is a halfway house. He used exactly those words and he realized that for many people, I think for most people, they they agree with me.

I had some auditing for a few months afterwards, but because I was not in the organization, I was able to say, you know, I think that I've been suppressed by Ron Hubbard. I think that's what Scientology is. It's becoming, you know, one of his body, Satan's becoming a part of his crazed psyche and doing, you know, you become self-determined, according to him, by doing exactly what he tells you to do, which doesn't quite work for me.

And the independent movement is still out there.

It's quite big in Russia and in Germany, probably bigger than the course. It is down to about 25000 people now.

I think in the worldwide association of Scientologists, tiny little thing, it's never been that big. It's always putting itself up. But about half the membership left between 82 and 84. Many of us went into the independents and most of those people and. Cult hopped into other groups and some nasty groups like Avatar grew out of that at that time. There are hundreds of splinter groups from Scientology starting in 1950. There are literally we counted 200 in 1993, 200 groups, and it penetrates all of the New Age movements.

It became involved with the Church of I Am Ramtha. It became involved with Dr. Peebles and various channeling movements. It's gone everywhere and it's gone with various of Hubbard's ideas, which people don't get over. For me, I left this whole thing in 96. I'd had 12 years of being harassed by fine people like Mike here. And it was on a daily basis. There was always something going on. I was being sued. I was being followed.

Well, I want to go back. I want to go back to the moment where you start to become a problem for Scientology. And then I want Mike to explain what is the internal conversations? When does somebody like John Lennon run the fair game list of Scientology with what he's doing? And what are the conversations that are happening about John and then what is happening to John? Well, when does the land on the fair game list? Yeah, I guess, John, that.

October the 18th, 1983, the night that I hosted the first public meeting of Scientologists in East Grinstead, there were two members of the Guardian's office. At the door, taking our names, we went in, we were on the list from that point, I would point you to my resignation. When did he.

But subsequent to that, then you became sort of because you lived in East Grinstead for one thing, you were always a pain in the ass, to put it mildly, that.

Nobody ever likes in in Ossa or Religious Technology Center to have the spouse living right nearby. And so and because of that, in part you and Ron Lollie were both in East Grinstead and both therefore sort of got a lot of the brunt of the efforts to shut down your activities because it was so easy. You were so you were so accessible. It made you easy targets.

And so I'm like, what is the conversation?

They come to you? There's like an awesome meeting and RTC meeting by David Miscavige or who who's involved in this conversation is in a meeting of like so there's this guy, these two men and their speeches and this is what we want to do. Here's the game plan.

What what happened?

Well well, I can only assume what happens in that, because at that time in nineteen eighty three, this was all the domain of Religious Technology Center. And in fact it was back in the days of Jesse Prince and Vicky as Naran, and they were being dictated to by David Miscavige.

And who were those who are those two people that you just mentioned. Vicky, as in Ram, was the former head of Religious Technology Center and David inspector general.

Oh, and this is like the big the big wigs of David Miscavige is organic personal organization, right?

Mike? Yes. Although he had not but he had not taken over RTC.

Oh, this is Hubbard. Oh, my goodness. OK, no, this was run.

Religious Technology Center was being run by Vickki as Naran the inspector general and Jesse Prince, her inspector general Mayar or deputy inspector general. He was both.

And they were receiving instructions from any broker who was with Hubbard off in hiding in his Bluebird bus.

But on the day to day activities of the Religious Technology Center, David Miscavige, who at that time had moved into office services and created the literary agency for L. Ron Hubbard as a sort of a guy's cover to give a way of Hubbard controlling Scientology through this for profit, you know, non-religious literary agency with huge amounts of money would be passing out of the releases all the all, you know, a whole subject that we could get into in great detail at some point.

But let's do it. David Miscavige was controlling the religious technology center and directing the activities because David Miscavige and author services were was responsible for establishing what was known as an all clear for L. Ron Hubbard to be able to come out of hiding and back into the world of Scientology.

And the whole idea, about 300 suits pending against him around the world. And Miscavige, his immediate job in the all-Clear unit, which is where he started his power grab from, was to make sure that Hubbard could come out and walk on the street again. And I'd just like to point out that he failed completely in that mission.

You know, Hubbard was ever able to see the light of day again. Right.

And of course, part of the all clear was to take care of the, quote, squirrels and squirrels is the Scientology term for those who are practicing Scientology outside of the authorized organization, which included John Attack and Ron Lollie and David Mayo and and Robin Scott and a bunch of these people, Dave Bisbee, Steve is there's a whole bunch of these people who were involved.

And in fact, this got even worse when Robin Scott went to Denmark and dressed up in a Sea org uniform.

I'm going to correct this story at this point. Robin Duck stood outside and stood watch while more Balmain and run all in uniforms, went into the organization and got material. Robin just stood what? He then shopped them all when Jesse Prince went over and told them, Jesse is such a persuasive man, the Robin Scott confessed everything and dump them all in in trouble.

I spent 10 years working on that court case for unlawfully and we won the case because I knew that if we put the right material in, Scientology would never go into court. And sure enough, on the morning of the trial, they dropped the case. But, you know, Robin Scott was not active there. And he's, you know, here's somebody who annoys me. I saved his bacon. I spent 10 years doing that.

But yeah, well, he annoys me to stick around these people that no matter what you do or say, he's never, never satisfied that you have somehow made contrition to him for whatever past indiscretions he was shouting, shouting at me.

Because in July 84, I pointed out to him that two of his guests at his place, Canada, Craig in Scotland, had come to me independently and said, you know, he says horrible things about you at the dinner table.

I've taken him aside politely and I'm saying this to him. And he said, Oh, Jerry breached my confidence. And at that very moment, his wife Adrienne walked up behind him, said, have you thank John for getting you out to prison in Denmark yet? And he said, Oh, no, thanks, John. So, you know, and as I say, spent 10 years getting him off the charges that the RTC brought against him.

But so it goes. But person moment of passion there. Sorry about the. No, we get listen, we totally get it as people who get it know, Amy, 37 and a half thousand pounds that they didn't pay me for that case.

So if Ron Lollie and Robin Scotter are listening, I'd still like to be paid for that.

There you go. Good for you. Yeah, there's no chance.

Yeah, well, so. So this had became a massive problem because this was the leak of the need for otes materials.

So this is a dead end and pretended to be Sea Org members on a mission and got the materials and walked out with them while they walked out with the with the the Knot's materials, and then they were distributed. And this resulted in massive litigation against David Mayo and the aforementioned Frank Gebhard and various other people.

And this became a huge, huge deal through that the late 80s and into the 90s. And the litigation went on forever. And the you ask, what's the conversation?

The conversation that happens when things like that occur is, OK, so how are we going to get a three channel handling done on every one of these people to get them either put in jail? In to shut up for however they get shut up or get them incarcerated in a mental institution or. And this is what Scientology is engaged in simply because people are posting and revealing what the upper levels of Scientology are, because, again, this would mean that people would have access to it and would be leaving Scientology going, well, I don't want to work my whole life for this shit if this is what it is right now.

I mean, you're not speaking that, Mike, as you're as you're attempting to destroy someone's life. What you're thinking as a Scientologist is what L. Ron Hubbard says, which is if people are exposed to the confidential upper levels of Scientology without being properly set up for those levels, they will literally die.

Correct. Yeah. And you're also thinking that these people are seeking to destroy man's only salvation.

Right. So it's not that you're thinking you want to destroy people like John just to do so.

You really believe in your heart like you were talking about a fundamentalist mentality and extremist mentality that literally people will die and he is boring and people like him are boring the road out for people's eternity.

Yeah, for all of mankind, yes. And this is what this is what people have a difficult time understanding is that you convince yourself or are convinced that the the life of one person compared to man's salvation of all of mankind is an irrelevance, is an unimportance, is something that should be sacrificed to save everyone. You know, how bad has this whole thing where he says, look, if a vaccine saves one percent of the, you know, kills one percent of the people but saves 100, that's a good thing, right?

Well, yes, that's a good, logical conclusion. But if you then take that and say, well, if Scientology saves 100 percent of mankind and you have to kill off one percent in order to have the 100 percent be saved, that's a good deal, right?

Yes, absolutely. The assumption is that Scientology is all good and will, in fact, save mankind.

That part nobody like gives a second thought to Hubbard said it, but that's exactly what the equation is that happens in Scientology and in the mind of Scientologists.

And, you know, we just saw recently, you know, Tony Ortega posted that success story from the superpower.

And I then wrote an article about it, about the idea that the enemies of Scientology, antisocial personalities, or as John so astutely pointed out, the anti Scientologist, the anti Scientologist, is an antisocial personality that isn't hesp, that is an enemy.

Those people dying is cause for celebration, literally in the minds of fundamentalist, i.e. all Scientologists. That is cause for celebration. And that is how the the absolutely most dedicated zealots of Scientology who Sea Org members and out of the Sea Org members, the most dedicated zealots of the Sea Org members are those who are in religious technology center.

That is how they view dealing with someone like John.

That's how I view dealing with someone like John. He you were I was polite to John to the extent that it was necessary, only meaning.

Well, so I if I could have walked into the room and spat on him and thought that that was I was going to get away with it, that's what I would have done.

Yeah. I was to meet Carlos Miller, but she Cobain and we are of the 85 self show and we got some of the best guess, but we had to change Tim Kaine. Jay Prince came. Yeah, everybody. Everybody can. But guess what? You got to catch up on all the episodes that you missed, like Fabo Killer, Mike, Busta Rhymes, Busta Rhymes, the.

Yeah, he passed a couple of rhymes to the eighty five s show on our hot radio app on Apple podcast or wherever you get your iPod.

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So what I want to know is what are the type of activities that we we were doing to John, like what were we doing when you were his last point, which is that if you look at any genocide, you know, in Nazi Germany and Cambodia and Rwanda and East Timor, the people who are being killed are always viewed as vermin, rats, fleas, lice. You you cease being human. You're so with Scientology, you're fair game because you're seen as being some kind of beast, some kind of evil monster, some camera.

It's going to harm all of mankind. So Mike said that when he met me in 94, 95, whenever it was, he thought I was a perfectly pleasant and sociable human being, personable human being. But he was there to destroy me because I was the enemy of humanity. And to you know, I'd like to point out, I've often been called an anti Scientologist. I'm the only pro Scientologist in the world. I'm a guy who gave his adult life to helping people who've been damaged by this thing.

You know, no matter what the cost, I'm anti Scientology, I'm pro Scientologist.

But this view, this black and white thinking of, you know, there are these evil people in the world and they're evil because they say that L. Ron Hubbard is not telling the truth. And there's the conflict because you can find in the works of our own Hubbard many places where he contradicts himself and demonstrates that he is indeed a liar, but where you try and bring that to a Scientologist, that they get stuck in a trap. Sorry, returned.

No end of of the type of program, Mike, that would be run against somebody like me.

I think that's where we where we got to what steps would be to to make me lose my mind, to get me in prison, to get me to commit suicide, to destroy all of the relationships I have with the people around me, which, by the way, Scientology was very effective at doing. You know, I was sued by my best friend. You know, my marriage fell apart. My health was destroyed.

Well, at all. Because a fair game of this practice. Yeah, because of this practice of fair game.

Yeah. Well, and all I had left was, was my family, my my brothers, my mother and one of my nephews. I had friends who were attacking me. I had friends who were writing affidavits who were no, they've not been involved in Scientology for ten years and more. But there was still this influence in 93. I talked out the head of Osas Investigation Department in the UK, and she told me that she had four agents in my personal life, including my driver, and she had a fifth one in training and that every day they ran an operation against me.

And you find out that nasty little rumours are being put around.

You know, you're accused of rape and child molesting and drug dealing and all of these kind of things. So that I went from a position where in East Grinstead, the two local newspapers were both publishing stories that I was working on. And then it all turned around and suddenly, you know, the police were coming to me for help and then that turned around gradually.

Scientology got pressure in there, got editors fired, got people pushed aside so that the the Friendship Network that I'd created by being honest and truthful was destroyed and my personal life was invaded and crushed. My children were disconnected from school. You know, there were all sorts of horrible pressures that came out of Scientology with the idea, I think that you'll become so unstable under this amount of pressure. And most people do. There's a guy called Neil Dudi, who was an Anglican vicar who ended up committing suicide after stories about him having.

You know, rent boys and drugs in his house, which are completely untrue, were running a scurrilous news rag called the News of the World. He took his own life, you know, and that when you look at it, that kind of stress is put upon people. And you guys know about this because you've experienced this kind of stress in your own lives as a consequence of taking the extraordinarily brave stand that you have taken against this pernicious organization.

So my I mean, I'm just like I'm still speechless when I hear this, so this is considered a success story, right? These are success stories for Ossa, the office of Special Affairs. Once again, want to point out there is no where religion that has a department solely dedicated to destroying people, as Scientology does. So the list just keeps getting stronger, I hope. And all of your minds have there is no connection between a real religion and Scientology or it's not it's not a religion.

It's never the religion. No, but we can have for an hour, some other time because it's one of the things that I researched in tremendous depth. Hubbard put forward the idea of a religion because he thought it was a way of defending from the medical authorities. He'd been sued for practicing medicine without a license in New Jersey and a way of getting around. That was to say, when I say I can raise people from the dead and cure cancer and leukemia and asthma and arthritis and anything else, those are religious claims.

Right. And by the way. Right. They're not genius claims.

Genius just claims, you know, genius in doing so because he's absolutely right.

And that's how they've gotten away with the what they've gotten away with by by receiving tax exemption.

But anyway, so like getting tax exempt dollars to harass people. I mean, how how perfidious is that?

You know, again, something the IRS could be doing doing something about.

But they're just too busy going after the twenty seven years later. Yeah, right. So so, Mike. But this is these are success stories in the eyes of the Office of Special Affairs and Dave Miscavige. And quite frankly, every Scientologist, when you destroy people's lives, when they're committing suicide, when they don't have a pot to piss in because they're being sued by Scientology, this is all part this is all being cheered and celebrated, right? Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely. That is the that is the ultimate accomplishment of the Office of Special Affairs. And what they are judged on is dismissed attackers and the definition of dismissed, which is pretty euphemistic, is they have been utterly destroyed. They have gone.

They are no longer around for whatever reason.

They're either turned and become usable assets like a Marty Rathbun, or they are literally dead or they have been entirely discredited and disposed so that they have no ability to accomplish anything or they've been paid off like like a Vickki Asurion who was like you mentioned earlier, she was an executive in Scientology.

And there's a there's a a legal document that you should probably post. Mike, where were Vickie admits to crimes that she committed on behalf of Scientology. And, you know, Vicki has just gone off to live her life and peace. Not speaking out, not doing anything, having received I Shingo's actually going to use money. Yeah, they used to just hand out money. And then when people like Jerry Armstrong kept on talking because they felt it was their legal right, they started giving a monthly salary.

I was offered because I'm an artist. I was offered by a guy called Greg Ryerson that Scientology would buy paintings from me through an agent every month. And as long as you keep quiet and I imagine that Marty Rathbun is in this situation, long as you keep quiet, you get your monthly check. I said, no, thank you. I was a little more rude than that, I must admit. But we are an hour, so that's okay.

You can say, oh, don't worry, say fuck and and everything. Like people love it.

They'd complain when I said I still have the recording of the conversation from 1994, I think it was. And I told him to fuck off. You know, there was no way that I was going to my silence was going to be bought. It wasn't going to happen. I mean, it's what might what you are asking a few months later that that I should go silent. And I paid to do that. And I walked out of the meeting because I knew that I'd been wrong footed when I went into the meeting because my lawyer had said, we don't talk unless there's a quarter of a million pounds on the table.

I said, you could have asked me before telling them, you know, and they didn't put any money on the table at all. The table was completely blank, except for a few glasses of water. So I said to them, what are your ranks in the same organization? And they refused to tell me, like this was privileged information. But I think the the understanding was that if I couldn't get that much control of the meeting, I had to go.

And so that was our meeting lasted about seven minutes, as I recollect, Mike. And then you went off the bridge to look at the cricket ground, which is your real intention, your other intention in travelling to Nottingham to see the cricket pitch, you namby-pamby, pantywaist, dilatant.

Really right in micrometer.

Yeah, exactly. The cricket. Claire Yeah.

But, John, how did you survive this awful campaign by Scientology?

Well, how did you survive it with Paulette Cooper on that one, my good friend Paulett, who said you don't once those marks are made upon you, they'll always be there. So whenever I get a manila envelope, I think it's a writ and it's you know, twenty years ago, since the last case was was dropped against me, whenever I see my answerphone blinking, I think it's going to be a lawyer calling me up. So but the thing is, I don't have post-traumatic stress disorder.

I have been assessed for it long since.

But there are things that will always remind you so. I think it was pigheadedness was was the main thing for me that I realized after nine years that I had innocently contributed positive energy to an organization that was evil. It was one of the most devastatingly corrupt, destructive organizations in the world because its methods of brainwashing, to use the word that L. Ron Hubbard used when he tried to sell them to the Kennedy administration, its ways of making slaves, as he said in the 1952 lecture.

These these techniques are more effective than any other. Form of mind control, you know, explosive persuasion, manipulation ever devised Scientologists, you know, you leave the Krishnas of the moon is a few months later you'll be OK again with Scientology. You won't. I mean, as you said in your wonderful book, Troublemaker, you can take the girl out of Scientology, but you can't take Scientology out of the girl. It you can't because it's built in a series, you know, this clever way of trapping you inside the thinking so that even when you've lost the words, the loaded language of Scientology, the concepts will remain.

Which is why after 17 years away, I came back in 2013 terrified of what was going to happen to me. But I started writing for Tony Ortega to say Scientology is systematic, implanting right from the first moment with training routines. You your control is being taken away from you.

And I wonder if we could just talk about that for one minute. Training routines for everybody at home, as is the Scientology term starts out.

It doesn't start out like, hey, we believe in body Fagan's and we believe in you FWS.

You know, it doesn't start out that way.

It starts out with basic everyday morals, ethics. You are in control of your own life and you relationships.

Yeah. Like to help you to get over, help you in business, to help you with finances.

And these are little courses that you can take. And they're again, they're thirty five dollars. Eighty five dollars, you know, starts out very small.

And then when you start getting more and more into the mandatory, the mandatory bigger courses, then you start talking about three hundred dollars, eight hundred dollars and you start getting into the thousands of dollars services, then you start getting into the more advanced auditing, which is their counselling, and it's thousands of dollars for twelve hours of auditing. And so it starts out harmless and things that people go, yes, I can agree with that.

It's very right, Mike. It's very some of it is helpful in the beginning.

Right. Like it teaches you how to communicate. Right. Like helpful in that people are in there going, well, my son can't communicate well. He looks down at the floor, he gives one word answers. He shrugs, whatever. Right.

My my teenage son or daughter. Right. Which is all teenagers, basically. Pretty much you do this, they sign them up for this communications course. Right. And then all of a sudden the person is being taught to look in your eyes, look at somebody's eyes when you're talking, say that you've heard them by acknowledging them. Right. So you're like, this is pretty helpful because my son or daughter or even an adult, very shy, doesn't look at now all of a sudden they're looking at people.

So I'm being I shouldn't have said that, John, because I was trying to lead you down a path and our listeners are. But but you're absolutely right, because I don't want to take it out of context.

It's seemingly helpful. But the truth of the matter is those things can be taught and should be taught. Through other means, because Scientology is slowly starting the hypnosis that this is all part of their process of hooking you into this kind of hypnotist. What do you call it? What do you call it, Mike?

It's not hypnosis, it's not hypnosis, it is, I guess it is, I guess it is the same.

So you can put into a hypnosis state right from the beginning. You're being made more suggestible. If you look at that thing of the shy teenager looking at the floor, what they're taught to do is not look somebody in the eye to you. Scientology's own term they're taught to confront. Right. You're right. Now, in real terms, that means staring at somebody. And that is what is called the predator stare by psychologists. What you're taught to do is to dominate other people as a communication strategy.

Now, if you think about it, you talk to military people. It's taught to police that you stare at somebody. It's also held to be a characteristic of psychopaths. It's a way of controlling people and bullying people. It's not a way of developing relationship and communicating. It's a way of. And then when you get to the upper indoctrination training routines, you actually physically control people. And so.

Yes, but also even prior to that, I don't want to say in one of these communications drills pretty early on, you learn to drill to zero bull bait. And this is where you teach your your your person to accept and dole out abuse. And and and it goes it's abusive. It's sexual.

And if you cry as if a grown man is talking about your vagina or your tits or how how much they want to have sex with you, if you have any reaction to that, you are what's called flunked. And that means that you failed the test. And part of the drill is to continue to go over the same thing over and over and over again and even make it worse so that the person has no reaction to being talked to that way.

And so and then the drill is turned around.

So the that you're taught to do that, if you react to any of that, by the way, which is necessary reaction is necessary for survival, that you are taught to not react to those things.

So you're training children, you're training people to be abused and you're training people to be abusers, which we all were and taught to be, and training people not to show their emotions, to share their emotions.

And then you train them to have fake emotions by using the tone scale. It gets worse and worse very rapidly. Yes.

Yes. So so I agree with you, which is why I wasn't really done with the Independent, because I was like, so are you teaching people teachers?

Are you teaching people that anything that happens to them is their fault? Are you teaching people through auditing that if they were raped or molested or beaten, that they had done it themselves? And that's the only reason why they're upset either this lifetime or a former lifetime. I mean, that's why it was heart.

Like, where do we draw the line here that what is pure, quote unquote, Scientology?

Because it's all it's all dangerous. It's all dangerous.

Yeah. I mean, Ron Hubbard's oldest boy, NIB's, who for seven years was his deputy in the nineteen fifties, said very succinctly, Scientology does not work as Ron Hubbard says. It works. It works as Ron Hubbard intends it to work.

And it really does it's a way of enslaving people psychologically and in the same organization, physically working a 90 hour week for a few dollars, if you do have children not being allowed to see them eating beans and rice diets for months on end. It's it's a deplorable situation. When you look at Hubbert at the other end of this, there's a point where he he banned toilet roll for the for the crew they weren't allowed to have because they weren't producing enough money.

When he dies, he leaves 648 million dollars, all of it taken from Scientology. He had no other source of income. So we have this guy who's basically treating his staff as scum and raking in all of this cash. I mean, I've met with so many people who took him briefcases full of money. And you know that when he was in the Bluebird bus, he had stacks of these attaché cases full of hundreds of thousands of dollars just in case he had to run off quickly somewhere.

I mean, he is originally my book, Blue Sky was was called Hubbard Through the Looking Glass, because you realize everything is the opposite of what you've been told. This is not, you know, immortality for everyone. And we're all going to make an ethical planet. This is one of the least ethical groups that has ever existed. You know, and the amazing thing is that you can take somebody like my good friend now, Mike Rinder, and turn them into a weaponized empath.

You can take somebody who is naturally empathetic, who's naturally kind and considerate, as I believe Mike is. From my experience of him and you, I thought you were going to say me.

I thought you were going to say me.

And Leah is just the most astonishingly compassionate woman I've ever met. You're exaggerating. That's too much. That's unbelievable. But but that's what it say. It was the empath. Zip it.

They were the people who became the most dangerous people, not the people like Miscavige, who is quite evidently has a little bit of a problem emotionally and with his temper, the dangerous people are the empathy.

And in Scientology, you meet many of them and they've been convinced that if they don't do this horrific act and right now, then the whole agonized future of every man, woman and child on this planet will be in jeopardy.

Yes.

And you're referring to one of the main policies that every Scientologist is is forced to read over and over again in Scientology career called Keeping Scientology Working Series one.

I notice that there's actually a subtle error in that sentence that he doesn't say the whole future of every man, woman and child. He says the whole agonized future. So what he's actually saying is the future is going to be agonized no matter what we do in Scientology.

It is said that psychopaths have a problem with grammar and but very often it makes a little slip with word, which if you watch carefully, it's like when he talks about being crippled and blinded in my philosophy, he says with wounded, with physical injuries to hip and bone. Is there some other kind of injury than physical, you know, listen to do this.

Yeah, right. But but, John, here's my here's my last question for you. Because because I really want people to hear this.

You survived Mike Rinder. You survived the Guardian's office and the officers of the world.

How, how?

And I want people to know that because it's important to know that you can come out of this and and survive it and continue to fight. I mean, you would think that somebody like you would eventually just kind of say, I did the work, what you have and I want to thank you for it. You did it many, many times. You put yourself and your life at risk. And for me, honestly, thank you. I wish I had listened to you sooner, but I didn't.

But but really, truly, thank you for the work that you've done. Thank you for that. Yes, of course. How have you survived it? I said, I'm a very stubborn person. My parents were the most honest people I've ever met, you know, my father would not claim a single penny on his expenses that that, you know, wasn't where they were.

They Scientologists? No.

My mom actually followed me into Scientology to see if it was going to be safe and was she was involved for eight years. And one day somebody said to her, because I'd started to make noise, somebody said to her, what will you do if John's declared suppressive? And at that moment, she left Scientology. Oh, wow. I'm in an organization that would even think about doing this. I'm not interested. My family's more important, but they were very honorable people.

And I suppose I was infected with that.

You know, I've got over it now, you know, and thank you for the money for this interview, by the way. And it just it just it just had to be. I couldn't. And it it became you know, originally it was why did this happen?

Who was Hubbard? What was going on? So, you know, I worked I was Russell Miller's researcher for birthdays Massiah, which was based upon my book Piece of Blue Sky. But I couldn't get a publisher.

So I really got deeply into the biography of Hubbard and realized, you know, what a confidence trickster he was. But the thing that really kept me going was that I met over the course of the years I've been involved in the recovery of about 600 people directly who, you know, are survivors of Scientology with one of them that took 35 years to actually pull him out to the point where he looked at it and said this was a terrible abuse, you know, and he realized and in his case, he had actually been sexually abused at the age of 15 by a Scientology auditor.

You know, that was his first contact with Scientology and took all those years to get that out, but to realize just how damaging it is. And I couldn't walk away from that. You know, and again, when he came back in 2013, I had two years which eventuated in the Getting Clear conference in Toronto, which is available on Vimeo, where we completely deconstructed Scientology.

You know, we we took a toxicologist, Angela Harris, Ph.D., and she took apart what Hubbard had said about the purification rundown. And you realize it's just complete pseudoscience with no basis in reality. It's actually caused a lot of harm to people along the way. So for me, the drive was that I suppose that I was seeing change in other people who were coming out of Scientology.

One of the nice things ever happened to me. I got a letter and it said, You won't remember me. We spent an afternoon together 15 years ago, and she was right. I've no idea who this lovely woman is. And she said her life was a catastrophe because of Scientology, but that from that afternoon onward, she was able to put her life together.

She had a happy marriage. It's 15 years later.

She had children. She had a career.

And she said that all comes from that afternoon together. So to have been that that catalyst for somebody to to get them their life back, you know, that's incredibly rewarding. I will make a boast, which I do do on the dear crazy only Lamar when when I asked him for a puff for the new edition of Let's Sell These People a Piece of Blue Sky, he said before the Internet and safety in numbers, there was an attack. And I guess that's kind of true, there was me, there was Lawrence Woloshin and Bob Penny, Bob's not mentioned often enough.

He was the guy who actually made the fact that database brilliant guy.

And there's Jerry Armstrong. Now, Lawrence wanted to get something back because his life had been ruined and he in the end got a lot of thin dimes.

He got nine point two million dollars from Scientology. They did pay him, most of which went to his lawyers. But he had a motivation to be involved.

And it took 20 years in the courts to get his money. Jerry had a motivation because they wouldn't leave him alone. He just wanted to go back to his mum in Canada and and not talk about it. He really did. And they just kept going after him, you know, at one point, in fact, trying to kill him back in 1982. For me, I don't really have a justification. I it offended me that people were being harmed in this way.

And and that was enough, you know, and then later it was, you know, my happiness, as with anybody, depends a lot upon the thought that I've done some good in the world, that I've helped people, you know.

Well, you have John, and can you really have and again, I want to thank you for what you've done over the over the course of a long period of time, 37 years, to stand up to the monster and remain standing and remain good humored and remain willing to take that.

Principled stand no matter what. And that's something that that is is incredibly admirable and rare.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, you know, you share it with me now or whatever. And Hubbard's words were on Arjay, 67, and and what an amazing job you guys have done in really getting this out to the world. My hope is that the next project will be how do people get involved with this and why? Because the idea that there's some vulnerability, some weakness, it's just not true. I've spent most of my time since I left Scientology studying the methods of manipulation and exploitative persuasion.

And everyday people, all sorts of people become involved in the idea that we're invulnerable is what makes us vulnerable. I think. Then why do people stay involved? You know what what are the the things around there? Why do people leave? And finally and I think most importantly, how do people recover? And why is it that if if they're not helped, that it can take decades for people to really get their heads out of this thing? For me, an afternoon with anybody.

I've never had a situation in the last 37 years where somebody came to me by the end of the afternoon. They hadn't changed their mind about Scientology and changed the behaviors that Scientology had implanted into them, which is the real problem.

I mean, you both know it took me about six months to stop staring at people. You know, after I left, it was like, oh, my God, hubby.

You know, the funny thing is my daughter, you know, like, I have a very bad habit of going.

Huh uh huh, uh huh, uh huh. And she goes, can you shut up and just let me finish my study?

Like it's such a you know, from the training routines, right. For people to know that, you know, to keep talking. Right.

You're supposed to know what happened and then what happened. Right. And I have such a bad habit of doing that. And you're right.

It's like but but at the same time, you can take the Scientology out of the girl, because if you're doing the right work, I don't know if you if you've ever read this book.

And I keep talking about it because I've been doing a lot of work in this area after being talking about other things for many years. In my first years of therapy, I was almost like testing the therapist to see if Scientology was correct about, you know, this being ridiculous waste of time and money.

Right. You know, real therapy. But I was telling Mike about the betrayal by Mica. You're reading that right, Mike?

I read it. Oh. You did all the exercises in there, Mike, that it says all like. Not a chance. I got to it.

I didn't actually get it. Well, that's why I said, get the damn block.

But anyway, it might interest you, John, in the work that you're doing, because it's really about doing the trauma work and how bonds are created with your abuser and your primary caretaker trauma, which I'm familiar with.

Judith Herman's primary work on this. And Ronnie John Foreman, her phenomenal book, Shattered Assumptions, where she talks about PTSD counseling and how to, you know, having been involved in this. But but also, I mean, an excellent book for anybody who's been involved in any authoritarian cult is Take Back Your Life.

Yes, yes. Yes. Amazing. Fabulous book. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you again, John. I think we've taken enough of your time where again, thank you for all that you've done and we're here.

Let's let's do this again. Let's please pick some specific topics, because I spent far too much time swimming around in this stagnant pool, finding these things out about Scientology. And I'm very happy to share them.

No, please, just think about think about what part of Scientology I'd like to talk about. Like, this is a subject that keeps on giving.

So you pick it and let's discuss it offline and do it next time.

Great. Thank you again. Thank you for all that you do. And thank you, John. We're here if you need us, Mark.

OK, and thank you all for listening, Mike, we'll talk soon. Yes, ma'am. Love you. Love you, too. Thank you, everyone.

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