Welcome back to the deep dive. If I sound a little
cautious today, there's a pretty good reason
for that. We are walking directly into a minefield.
That's one way to put it. And I don't mean that
metaphor. Well, OK, maybe a little metaphorically,
but we're tackling a subject that is just surrounded
by lawyers, by razor wire and about what? 70
years of incredibly intense history. It is certainly
a heavy hitter. Depending on which document in
this massive stack in front of us you choose
to believe, we are either about to discuss the
only hope for saving humanity from insanity and
nuclear destruction. Right. The salvation of
mankind. Or. We're about to dissect a transnational
criminal enterprise that masquerades as a religion
to hoard cash and abuse its members. There is
almost no middle ground in the source material,
is there? It is completely, utterly polarized.
We are talking, of course, about Scientology.
We are. And, you know, it's one of those topics
where everyone thinks they know the story. Oh,
yeah, absolutely. You see the headlines. You
picture Tom Cruise jumping on a couch. You picture
John Travolta in a pilot's uniform. You hear
all these rumors about aliens and volcanoes.
The sci -fi stuff. Right. And the general consensus
for the average person is usually just it's that
weird thing famous people do that costs a fortune.
And that's the caricature. It's the tabloid version.
But. Our mission today and why we have so many
documents in front of us from so many different
sources is to go way, way past that. We have
to. We need to look at the mechanics. How does
a science fiction writer in the 1950s, I mean,
a guy who was writing pulp stories for a penny
a word, how does he pivot to creating a global
theology? And what is the actual technology they
claim fixes the human mind? That's the core of
it. And then there's the big one. Why is this
organization seemingly constantly at war with,
well, with everyone? Yeah. The government, the
internet, the entire psychiatric profession.
Understand that. I think we have to start with
the concept of the two Scientologies. The two
Scientologies. Okay, break that down for us.
Well, looking at the sources, you have the Scientology
that's presented to the public. This is the humanitarian
organization, the one with the gleaming new buildings,
the anti -drug campaigns, the celebrity endorsements.
The one you see on the Super Bowl ad. Exactly.
It presents itself as a modern, practical religion
offering real tools for life. You know, communication
courses, help with studying, that kind of thing.
Okay, so that's version one. And the second one?
The second one is the Scientology you find in
court dockets, in FBI files, and in sworn affidavits
from former high -ranking executives who were
there for decades. And that version is different.
It's described as a high -control group, punitive,
secretive, and incredibly, incredibly expensive.
So our goal today isn't to take a side and say
this is good or this is evil. No, we're just
unpacking the sources. Our goal is to unpack
all this source material to see how these two
completely contradictory versions can possibly
coexist. So let's start at the very beginning.
Because before there was a church and way before
there was a controversy, there was just a man,
L. Ron Hubbard. L. Ron Hubbard, or LRH, as he's
often referred to by his followers. Born in 1911.
By the 1930s and 40s, he was an incredibly prolific...
Writer. I mean, unbelievably prolific. He was
a machine. A machine. He wrote westerns, adventure
stories, fantasy. But he was specifically known
for his science fiction. And that background
is so important to everything that follows, right?
He was a world builder by trade. Exactly. He
was used to creating entire universes with their
own rules, their own physics, their own histories.
But in 1950, he shifts gears completely. He releases
a book that just explodes onto the scene. Dianetics.
The modern science of mental health. Now, correct
me if I'm wrong here, but reading through the
early history, Dianetics wasn't pitched as a
religion at all, was it? Not even a little bit.
And that distinction is absolutely critical for
the listener to understand. In 1950, Hubbard
presented Dianetics as a mental health science.
A science. Okay, and the timing is key here too,
right? This is post -World War II. You have to
remember the context. Psychology and psychiatry
were still in a, well, a very rough state. Lobotomies
were still happening. People were deeply traumatized
from the war. And Hubbard comes along and offers
what is essentially an engineering approach to
the mind. An engineering approach? I like that.
It sounds so appealing. It's like saying, you
aren't broken. You're not crazy. You just have
a mechanical issue we can fix. Precisely. The
central thesis of Dianetics is that the human
mind has a fundamental flaw. He divided the mind
into two primary parts. You have the analytical
mind, which he said is like a perfect computer.
It's rational. It's calculating. It's flawless.
Okay, the good part. And then you have the villain
of the story, the reactive mind. The reactive
mind. Let's really unpack that. What is it doing
to us? Hubbard claimed the reactive mind is a
kind of stimulus response mechanism that only
kicks in when you are unconscious or semi -unconscious
or in extreme pain. So when the analytical mind
is offline. Exactly. And when it's on, it records
everything that's happening around you. Not like
a memory, but like a... A raw, painful recording.
He called these recordings engrams. An engram.
Okay, so give us an analogy for that. Make it
real for us. Okay, imagine you're a child and
you get kicked by a horse. You're knocked unconscious.
Your analytical mind, the perfect computer, shuts
off. But your reactive mind is still recording
everything. It records the physical pain of the
kick, the sight of the horse, the smell of the
manure in the barn, maybe someone shouting, he's
hurt. Got it. It's all recorded in this one toxic
file. Exactly. And later on, years later, you're
walking past a farm, you smell manure, or maybe
you hear someone in a movie shout, he's hurt.
And suddenly, your reactive mind keys in that
anagram. You get a sudden headache. You feel
a surge of anxiety. You have no idea why. It's
like a glitch in your hard drive, a corrupted
file that just keeps playing in the background
and messing everything up. That's a great way
to put it. And Hubbard said these engrams are
the root cause of all human misery. Not just
anxiety, but irrational behavior, psychosomatic
illnesses, bad eyesight, asthma, arthritis. He
blamed it all on engrams. Oh, so he was offering
a single cause for everything. It's a single
cause. And Dianetics was the debugger. The therapy,
which he called auditing, was designed to find
these engrams and erase them. And the ultimate
goal of the therapy was to erase them all, to
become clear. Yes. A clear is a person who has
no reactive mind left. It's been completely erased.
And Hubbard promised that a clear would have
a near -perfect IQ, a photographic memory, no
illnesses. They would be, for all intents and
purposes, an optimized human being. Which, let's
be honest, is an absolutely incredible sales
pitch. Here is a book, a therapy that will make
you a superhuman. And the public ate it up. Dianetics
was a massive bestseller. Dianetics clubs sprang
up all over America. People were literally auditing
each other in their living rooms, reading from
the book. But there was a major, major problem.
The scientists didn't like it. They hated it.
To put it mildly, the American Psychological
Association, the medical establishment, they
rejected it almost immediately as dangerous pseudoscience.
They said there was absolutely no evidence for
any of these claims about engrams or the reactive
mind. And then the business side of it started
to fall apart, too. It crumbled. The Dianetics
Foundation went bankrupt. Hubbard actually lost
the rights to the book Dianetics for a while
in 1952. It was a complete disaster. So let's
pause right here. He's bankrupt. The scientific
community is laughing at him. He's lost the rights
to his own bestseller. This really feels like
it should be the end of the story. It does. Most
people would pack it up, go back to writing Pulp
Fiction and call it a day. But Hubbard pivots.
And this is one of the most scrutinized, most
critical moments in the entire history of this
movement. This is the moment where we shift from
science to religion. This is the turning point.
I want to look at a specific document we have
here. It's a letter from April 1953 that Hubbard
wrote to Helen O 'Brien, who was helping manage
what was left of the organization. This letter
is often cited by critics as the smoking gun.
In it, Hubbard is discussing how to structure
their new organization in Phoenix. And he writes,
quote, The religion angle. It sounds... Frankly,
it sounds like a business strategy, not a spiritual
revelation. Historians and critics argue that's
exactly what it was. It was a pragmatic, almost
cynical move. If you frame your organization
as a clinic, you're subject to medical regulations,
malpractice suits. You have to prove your claims.
Right. You're held to a scientific standard.
But if you frame it as a religion, you get First
Amendment protection. You don't have to prove
your therapy works in a lab because it's not
therapy anymore. It's a spiritual ritual. And
taxes. We can't forget about taxes. Exactly.
So in late 1953, the first church of Scientology
is incorporated in New Jersey. And Hubbard was
surprisingly open about this. Even later, in
a 1962 lecture, he told his followers that the
religious structure was, quote, entirely a matter
for accountants and solicitors. Wow. He was saying
the quiet part out loud right there. But let's
look at the name itself. Scientology. It still
sounds scientific. It has science right in the
name. It's designed to. It's a very clever linguistic
blend. You have the Latin word seer, which means
to know, and then the Greek word logos, meaning
the study of. So Hubbard defined it as knowing
about knowing. Knowing about knowing. It's very
meta. It is. But by using that iology suffix,
he was borrowing the prestige of science in the
atomic age. It sounds like technology, like engineering.
It appeals to a certain kind of person who might
not be interested in faith or God, but is very
interested in results and workability. So now
we have the vehicle, the church. It provides
legal protection, but they need a new engine.
They need a theology. Because Dianetics was all
about the mind, but Scientology goes deeper.
This is where we get introduced to the thetan.
This is the core shift from Dianetics to Scientology.
In Dianetics, you are a mind and a body. In Scientology,
you learn that you are not your body. You are
not your mind. You are not your name or your
personality. You are an immortal spiritual being
called a thetan. So I don't have a soul or a
thetan. I am a thetan. Exactly. You are the driver.
The body is just the car. A meat body, as they
sometimes call it in the texts. The doctrine
teaches that the thetan is immortal. has lived
through countless past lives on this planet and
others over trillions of years. Trillions with
a T. Trillions. Hubbard's timeline for the universe
is, let's say it's much, much older than what
modern science suggests. And the goal of Scientology
then is to awaken this thetan. It's to rehabilitate
the thetan to its native. God -like abilities.
One of the key concepts introduced here is exteriorization.
This is the ability of the thetan to actually
detach from the body and exist independently
of it while still being able to control it. So
out -of -body experiences on demand. That's the
idea. And this all leads us to the central roadmap
of the religion, which they call the bridge to
total freedom. I've seen this chart. It's huge.
It looks like a giant periodic table or a really
complex corporate flow chart. It is massive.
And it is a very rigid step -by -step process.
You cannot skip steps. You start at the bottom
as a pre -clear. You do auditing sessions to
handle your earthly traumas and engrams and become
clear. But in Scientology, unlike in Dianetics,
becoming clear is just the halfway point. Just
the beginning, really. So what comes after clear?
Once you are clear... You attest to that state
and then you move on to the operating thetan
levels or the OT levels. Operating thetan. That
word operating implies function, action. Right.
An operating thetan is defined as someone who
can operate spiritually without being encumbered
by matter, energy, space or time. They can be
at cause over these things. So we're not just
talking about being happy or having a good memory
anymore. It's a whole different ballgame. The
promise is incredibly seductive. We aren't just
talking about peace of mind. The source material
says an OT is posited as having godlike power,
the ability to create personal universes, total
control over your environment. But, and I feel
like this is a very big but, getting across that
bridge isn't like going to Sunday school. You
have to pay. You do. And this is one of the biggest
points of contention and criticism. Scientology
operates on a very strict doctrine of exchange.
Hubbard thought that if you give something away
for free, the recipient doesn't value it and
it can actually harm them spiritually. So, you
must pay for auditing and training. And we aren't
talking about a collection plate being passed
around on a Sunday. No. We are talking about
fixed prices for our courses and for intensives
of auditing, which are 12 .5 -hour blocks. And
the costs are steep. How steep are we talking?
The source material from ex -members and journalists
who have investigated this site estimates that
traversing the entire bridge, going from the
very bottom all the way to OT8, the highest level
currently available, can cost anywhere from $400
,000 to over $559 ,000, adjusted for inflation.
Half a million dollars for spiritual freedom.
And that's a conservative estimate. That assumes
you move through the levels without any trouble.
If your auditor finds you have a dirty needle
on the E -meter, meaning you have more issues
to handle, you have to pay for more hours to
fix it. Okay, you mentioned the E -meter. Let's
pause on that. Because if you walk past a church
of Scientology, you might see people in the window
at a desk holding two metal cans connected to
a meter. What is happening there? That is the
electropsychometer, or E -meter. It's basically
a simple device that measures galvanic skin response.
It passes a tiny electrical current through the
body and measures changes in resistance. So the
theory is what? That your thoughts have electrical
properties? The theory is that when you are asked
a question about a past trauma, the thought itself
carries mass, or a kind of spiritual charge.
That charge changes the electrical resistance
in your body, and the needle on the meter moves.
A smooth floating needle means no charge. A sticky
or falling needle means you've hit on something.
So it's a lie detector or a trauma detector.
Scientologists would say it's a spiritual tool
for the auditor to locate areas of distress with
precision. It'd be very clear it doesn't diagnose
anything. Critics and psychologists would say
it's a prop, an intimidation tool used to induce
a kind of hypnotic state or create dependency
on the process. But the legal status of it is
fascinating. It is. The FDA actually raided the
church in the 60s and seized the e -meters, claiming
they were fraudulent medical devices being used
to make unproven claims of curing illnesses.
So how did they get them back? After a long legal
battle, a court ruled they could use them, but
only if they were clearly labeled as religious
artifacts, not medical devices, and that the
church made no claims of curing disease. So if
you look at an e -meter today, it has a disclaimer
right on it saying it is for religious use only.
It's amazing how the legal and the spiritual
are so deeply intertwined here. Every step seems
calculated to protect the organization. But I
want to get to the stuff that you don't see on
the brochures. The secret stuff. The space opera.
Ah, yes. This is where we get into the upper
confidential levels of the bridge. Specifically
operating Thetan Level 3, or OT3. This is the
one they call the Wall of Fire. That's what Hubbard
called it. Now think about this. In most religions,
the core myth, the story of creation or the fall
of man or salvation, is the first thing you learn.
It's taught to everyone openly. Right, it's the
foundation. In Scientology, the core cosmology,
the creation story, is treated like a trade secret.
You are not allowed to know it until you have
paid for and successfully completed all the levels
leading up to OT3. And they litigate like crazy
to keep it secret. Aggressively. They've sued
people for copyright infringement for posting
it online. But thanks to the internet and court
leaks, primarily from a major case in the 80s,
we have the documents. We know the story. So
tell us the story. What is the deal with Xenu?
According to Hubbard's handwritten materials
for the OT3 course, the story begins 75 million
years ago. At that time, there was a galactic
confederacy of 76 planets, and it was suffering
from a severe overpopulation problem. Okay, an
intergalactic government with a population crisis.
And the ruler of this confederacy was a being
named Xenu. X -E -N -U. Xenu, got it. Xenu decided
to solve the overpopulation problem once and
for all. He had his minions call in billions
of citizens from across the confederacy for supposedly
income tax inspections. But it was a trap. A
trap? What did you do? He had them paralyzed,
frozen in a mixture of alcohol and glycol, and
then loaded them into spacecraft that Hubbard
specifically describes as looking exactly like
DC -8 airplanes but with rocket engines. DC -8
spaceplanes, 75 million years ago. That's a very
specific detect. Very specific. These spaceplanes
flew to Earth, which at the time was called TGAC.
And Zinu's forces stacked these billions of frozen
people around the bases of volcanoes across the
planet. Right. Places like Hawaii and Las Palmas.
And then? And then he detonated hydrogen bombs
inside the volcanoes. He blew them all up. He
blew them all up. A mass genocide on a galactic
scale. Yeah. But the explosion didn't destroy
their souls, their thetans. It just ripped them
from their bodies. So now you have billions and
billions of disembodied, traumatized thetans
floating around in Earth's atmosphere. Okay,
this is a lot to take in. It sounds exactly like
a pulp sci -fi novel from the 50s. It's often
being compared to one. But the story doesn't
end there. Zinu's forces then captured all these
floating souls using electronic ribbons or sticky
traps. They were brought to huge cinemas where
they were forced to watch movies for 36 days
straight. What kind of movies? Movies that implanted
them with all sorts of false data and confusing
imagery. Hubbard called these implants. They
included images of God, the devil, Christ, and
the foundations of modern earth religions. The
idea was to confuse them so they could never
figure out what truly happened. Then they were
released. So what does this ancient story have
to do with us now? Why do I need to pay $100
,000 to learn this? This is the absolute crux
of the upper OT levels. Hubbard taught that these
traumatized, disembodied, brainwashed thetans
didn't just disappear, they clustered together.
And today, right now, they are attached to you.
They're attached to me. They're called body thetans.
I'm haunted. I'm infested with alien ghosts.
In a word, yes. The doctrine says that your persistent
fears, your anxieties, your physical pains, your
self -doubts are often not even yours. They are
being caused by these body thetans that are stuck
to you, re -experiencing their own ancient trauma.
They're like spiritual parasites. Exactly. And
the entire purpose of the advanced OT levels.
from OT3 up to OT7, is to telepathically locate
these body thetans, communicate with them, audit
them through the trauma of the volcano explosion,
and get them to leave your body. Exorcism via
telepathy for thousands and thousands of these
things. One by one or in clusters. It's a very
long process. But why keep this so incredibly
secret? I mean, every religion has its myths.
Why hide this one behind a firewall of litigation
and nondisclosure agreements? Hubbard's official
warning was dire. He claimed in the course materials
that if you learn this material before you were
spiritually ready, before you had done all the
prep work on the lower levels of the bridge,
it would kill you. It would kill you. So he said
you would get pneumonia and die. It was called
the wall of fire because it was supposedly that
dangerous to your physical body. So it's a spiritual
safety hazard. That's the internal logic from
an external. It's much more pragmatic. If you
told a brand new recruit on day one about Xenu
and hydrogen bombs and alien ghosts, they'd laugh
and walk right out the door. Of course. You have
to be slowly acclimated to the belief system.
It's the classic. boiling frog method of indoctrination.
By the time you finally reach OT third, you have
already invested years of your life, countless
hours of auditing, and maybe hundreds of thousands
of dollars. You were too invested to just walk
away. It really highlights that duality we talked
about at the start. On the surface, it's all
self -help, communication courses, study tech.
But deep inside, it's an intergalactic war against
body parasites from 75 million years ago. And
that duality extends to the very structure of
the organization itself, because running this
massive worldwide operation requires a massive,
dedicated workforce. And that brings us to the
Sea Org. The Sea Organization. These are the
people you see in the naval style uniforms, right?
Yes. They were established in 1967 when Hubbard
decided to move his base of operations onto a
small fleet of ships to avoid the jurisdiction
of governments like the U .S., U .K., and Australia,
which were investigating him. He appointed himself
the Commodore. So it's a clergy, basically. It's
the elite inner core, the dedicated clergy. They're
the ones who run the organization, deliver the
upper levels, and manage the whole enterprise.
And they sign a contract. I remember reading
about this. It's a very, very long contract.
It is the longest contract. They sign a one billion
year contract. One billion years. Symbolizing
their commitment to serve Scientology and its
goals, not just in this lifetime, but in all
of their future lifetimes as Thetans. It creates
a total all -encompassing identity. You aren't
just a person working a job. You are an immortal
being on a sacred mission to clear the planet.
That is heavy. And the lifestyle isn't exactly
a Caribbean cruise from what the sources say.
Far from it. The source material from former
members describes it as an extremely high pressure
communal existence. Long, long hours. Often 90
or 100 hours a week. Very little pay. Sometimes
just a stipend of $50 a week. And the discipline
is intense. Let's talk about that discipline.
Because this isn't just your boss telling you
to try harder next time. This is a whole system.
Management by statistics. Right. Hubbard was
obsessed with metrics and statistics. Every single
post in the organization, from the person cleaning
the floors to the top executives, has a stat
that is plotted on a graph every week. What kind
of stats are we talking about? It could be number
of new people brought in, value books sold, or
just gross income. If your graph is going up,
you're up stat. You're in good standing. If the
graph is going down, you're down stat, and you're
in serious trouble. Make money. Make more money.
That's an actual directive found in Hubbard's
policy letters. It is. And if you are consistently
down stat, or if you violate any of the myriad
of rules, the consequences are severe. This brings
us to the Rehabilitation Project Force, or the
RPF. The RPF. This is described by critics and
numerous former members as essentially a prison
camp. That's the description they use. It's a
disciplinary program for Sea Org members who
have been deemed a problem. The sources describe
conditions where members are stripped of their
rank, made to wear black boiler suits, and engaged
in hard physical labor all day. And what else?
They're often housed in squalid conditions like
a basement or a garage. They're separated from
their families, forbidden from speaking to anyone
unless spoken to, and forced to eat table scraps
after everyone else has eaten. It's a process
of total humiliation designed to break the individual's
will and rebuild them in the image of the organization.
And this isn't just for low -level grunts who
mess up. We're talking about high -ranking executives
being sent there. Absolutely. No one is safe
from the ethics system. And the ultimate weapon
in the system, the thing that keeps everyone
in line, is the policy of disconnection. This
is the one that breaks families. We see it in
the documentaries constantly. It's heartbreaking.
It is arguably the most powerful control mechanism
they have. Hubbard defined a category of people
he called suppressive persons, or SPs. He claimed
that about 2 .5 % of the population are SPS people,
who are truly malevolent antisocial personalities,
like Hitler or... Anyone who actively criticizes
Scientology. So if I leave the church and I decide
to speak out about my experiences, I'm an SP.
You are immediately declared a suppressive person.
And if you are declared an SP, a policy letter
is issued. And any Scientologist in good standing,
your spouse, your children, your parents, your
best friends must disconnect from you. Meaning
what exactly? They have to sever all ties completely.
No phone calls, no emails, no contact whatsoever.
If they refuse, they are labeled a potential
trouble source or PTS, and they themselves risk
being thrown out of the church. It's a mechanism
to keep people in. You can't leave without losing
everyone and everything you love. It effectively
holds your entire family hostage. And it brings
us to how the church deals with the outside world.
Because if you think they are tough on their
own members, just look at how they treat their
enemies. We have to talk about fair game. Fair
game. The name alone sounds ominous. It's a policy
written by Hubbard in the 1960s. He wrote that
an enemy of the church, an SP, may be deprived
of property or injured by any means, by any Scientologist,
without any discipline of the Scientologist,
may be tricked, sued, or lied to or destroyed.
Tricked, sued, or lied to or destroyed. That's
in writing from the founder. It was. Now the
church will say they officially canceled this
policy by name in 1968 because it was causing
bad PR. But critics and countless former members
allege that while the name might have changed,
the practice continues unabated. They just don't
call it fair game anymore. And they point to
some pretty extreme operations as proof. Like
Operation Snow White. This is one of those things
that if you put it in a movie, people would say
it's too unrealistic. It is the largest single
instance of domestic espionage in the history
of the United States. In the 1970s, the Guardian's
office, which was the intelligence and covert
operations wing of the church, decided to purge
government files in dozens of countries that
were negative towards Hubbard and Scientology.
They didn't just hack in. They physically infiltrated
the federal government. They did. Scientologists
got jobs inside the IRS and the U .S. Justice
Department. They worked as clerks, secretaries
assistants. They planted bugs in conference rooms,
wiretapped phones and stole tens of thousands
of sensitive documents. And they got caught.
They did. The FBI raided them in 1977 and it
led to the conviction of 11 top Scientology officials,
including Mary Sue Hubbard, L. Ron Hubbard's
own wife. She went to prison. That is just staggering.
It shows the lengths they will go to. And then
there was the operation against the journalist
Paulette Cooper, Operation Freakout. Paulette
Cooper wrote one of the very first critical books,
The Scandal of Scientology, in 1971. The church
didn't just sue her. They launched a multi -year
campaign to utterly destroy her life, which they
codenamed Operation Freakout. And the goal. The
stated goal. in their own internal documents,
which were seized by the FBI, was to get her
incarcerated in a mental institution or jail.
How did they try to do that? It's insane. They
stole her personal stationery. They used it to
write and mail fake bomb threats to the Church
of Scientology itself, and even one to Henry
Kissinger, trying to frame her as a terrorist.
She was actually indicted by a grand jury before
the FBI discovered the plot during the Snow White
raids and realized she'd been framed. That is
terrifying. It's institutional gaslighting on
a federal level. It shows that the organization,
at its core, views itself as being at war with
a hostile world. Hubbard viewed the universe
as a battleground between the forces of Scientology
and the forces of suppression. And in a war,
anything goes. This war mentality seems to extend
to the legal system, too. The phrase litigiousness
comes up constantly in the sources when describing
their tactics. Hubbard famously wrote in a policy
letter, the purpose of the suit is to harass
and discourage rather than to win. He advised
using lawsuits as a tool. You sue critics, not
necessarily because you think you can win, but
to bleed them dry, to make it so expensive and
so psychologically draining to criticize Scientology
that people will just stop doing it. And they
used this tactic to essentially destroy the original
cult awareness network. They did. The original
CAN was a nonprofit that had families of people
and groups they considered cults. Scientology
and its members filed dozens of lawsuits against
them until CAN was forced into bankruptcy. And
then... And then, in the most incredible twist
of irony, a Scientologist bought the name...
the logo and the phone number of the Cult Awareness
Network in the bankruptcy auction. So now if
you Google the Cult Awareness Network for help,
you are calling a group backed by the Church
of Scientology. That is strategic genius in a
very, very dark way. It is ruthlessly efficient.
We've talked a lot about the history and the
attacks on external critics, but we have to address
the allegations of abuse inside the organization,
especially in more recent years. Hubbard died
in 1986. Who took over? A man named David Miscavige.
He was a very young, very intense Sea Org member
who rose through the ranks and seized power in
the vacuum that Hubbard's death created. Under
his leadership, the organization became even
more focused on expansion and acquiring real
estate. But the reports of abuse also intensified.
And this is where we start hearing about something
called the hole. Yes. According to testimony
from multiple high -ranking executives who later
left, the hole was a confinement facility at
Gold Base, the international headquarters in
California. They described being confined in
a pair of double -wide trailers, basically an
office building, for months and in some cases
years. Confinement? They alleged they were subjected
to group confessions, forced to perform humiliating
tasks, and that there was physical violence.
beatings, people being slammed against walls.
I recall reading about a game of musical chairs.
That's one of the most bizarre and disturbing
details to come out. Allegedly, Miscavige ordered
these top executives, people who have been in
for decades, to play musical chairs to the sound
of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. Why? They were
told that the last person standing would be the
only one allowed to stay at the base. Everyone
else would be kicked out of the Sea Org. which
for them meant losing their entire world, their
families, everything. They were literally fighting
for their lives over a chair. And what is the
church's response to these allegations? They
deny it completely. They say the hole never existed
as described and that these are all lies from
disgruntled former members, they call them apostates,
who have an axe to grind and are looking for
a payday. But the consistency of the stories
from so many different high -level people is
what observers find so compelling. And this isn't
the only serious allegation. There's a tragic
case of Lisa McPherson. That's a landmark case.
Lisa McPherson was a dedicated Scientologist
who died in 1995. She had a mental breakdown
after a minor car accident. But because Scientology
is so opposed to psychiatry, instead of getting
professional mental health care, she was taken
to the Fort Harrison Hotel in Clearwater, Florida
to undergo the introspection rundown. Which is
what exactly? It's a Scientology process designed
to handle a psychotic break. Yeah. It involves
complete isolation and silence. She was held
there for 17 days. And she died in their care.
She died of a pulmonary embolism. The coroner's
report said she was severely dehydrated, had
cockroach bites, and was in a state of neglect.
The state of Florida brought two felony charges
against the church abuse of a disabled adult
and practicing medicine without a license. But
the case was eventually dropped due to controversies
with the medical examiner's changing opinions.
But it led to a lawsuit. A massive wrongful death
lawsuit from her family, which the church eventually
settled confidentially. It remains a powerful
rallying cry for critics about the dangers of
rejecting conventional medicine. And then there
are the allegations regarding women and children.
The forced abortion claims from former Sea Org
members are particularly disturbing. They are.
Multiple women who were in the Sea Org for years,
people like Astral Woodcraft and Claire Headley,
who have spoken out publicly, allege that because
the Sea Org is a paramilitary -style group focused
247 on clearing the planet, having children was
viewed as a major distraction, a liability. So
they claim. They claimed they were pressured,
coerced, and essentially forced into having abortions
to keep their posts. To keep their jobs. To keep
their standing in the only world they knew. They
alleged that if they refused, they faced being
sent to lower -level organizations, being declared
a problem, or being kicked out entirely, which
meant losing their spouse and their life's worth.
That's the church's response. Again, they deny
this completely. They say they have a profound
respect for family and that these decisions were
personal choices. But the sheer volume of corroborating
testimonies from different women over many years
creates a very, very dark picture. It really
paints a picture of an organization where the
so -called mission overrides basic human rights
and family bonds. That's the greater good argument
taken to its absolute extreme. If you truly believe
you are the only hope for the survival of the
universe, then individual suffering can become
acceptable. even necessary collateral damage.
Which brings us back to how they view the rest
of society, specifically their absolute hatred
of psychiatry. It's not just a dislike. The sources
describe it as an all -out war. It's a total
war. Hubbard despised psychiatrists. He called
them psychs. He blamed them for pretty much every
evil in modern society. He claimed they were
responsible for the Holocaust, for creating drug
abuse, for political suppression. He viewed psychiatry
as a rival priesthood. They were competing for
the same territory, the human mind. So they formed
the CCHR. The Citizens Commission on Human Rights.
It sounds like a generic laudable rights group,
but it's a Scientology front organization founded
in 1969 with the sole purpose of dismantling
the entire field of psychiatry. And they're still
active today. Very active. They have a museum
in Hollywood called Psychiatry, an industry of
death. They aggressively lobby against antidepressants,
ADHD medication and mental health legislation
around the world. And speaking of front groups,
we have to talk about recruitment because people
don't usually walk in off the street and say,
sign me up for the alien ghosts and the billionaire
contract. No, the gradient is key. You start
small. You might see a tent on the sidewalk offering
a free stress test. You sit down. hold the cans
of the e -meter, they ask you some questions,
and then tell you that you have areas of stress
and ruin in your life that they can help you
with. So it starts with a simple personality
test. Or maybe you encounter Narconon, their
drug rehab program. Narconon is Scientology.
It is based entirely on Hubbard's non -medical
writings. It uses something called the Purification
Rundown. long hours in a sauna combined with
massive doses of vitamins, supposedly to sweat
out drug toxins. Critics, including medical professionals,
argue it lacks any scientific backing and is
primarily a recruitment tool that funnels vulnerable
people into the church. And then, of course,
there's the celebrity strategy, Project Celebrity.
This goes all the way back to a 1955 policy letter
from Hubbard. He knew that famous people are
trendsetters. If you get the influencers, you
get the public. So they created celebrity centers
specifically to cater to artists and famous people.
And it worked. It worked brilliantly. Tom Cruise,
John Travolta, Elizabeth Moss, Nancy Cartwright.
They are the smiling, successful face of the
organization. They make it look safe, desirable,
and elite. But something happened in the mid
-2000s that they couldn't control. A new enemy
emerged. The Internet. The Internet was the one
thing Hubbard couldn't possibly have predicted,
and it completely changed the game. In 2008,
an internal Scientology video of Tom Cruise,
meant only for other members, was leaked to the
Web. I remember this. He's very intense in it.
Very intense. He has these wide eyes, and he's
talking about how Scientologists are the authorities
on the mind and the only ones who can really
help. The church tried to scrub it from the Web,
issuing copyright takedown notices everywhere.
And the Internet fought back. Enter Anonymous.
The loosely organized hacktivist collective.
They saw this censorship attempt as an attack
on the freedom of the Internet. They declared
war on the Church of Scientology and launched
Project Chenology. What did that involve? It
started with cyber attacks. DDoS attacks that
took down Scientology websites. Then it moved
to prank calls and black faxes. And then it moved
into the real world. Thousands of people all
wearing Guy Fawkes masks from the movie V for
Vendetta began holding protests outside Scientology
orgs all over the world. That was a huge turning
point, wasn't it? It was monumental. Before that,
fear of litigation kept most people silent. Anonymous
was, well... Anonymous. They couldn't be easily
sued into silence. They broke the fear barrier.
Then that opened the floodgates. It led to a
new wave of ex -members feeling safe enough to
speak out. It paved the way for major documentaries
like HBO's Going Clear and Leah Remini's TV show.
It completely changed the public narrative and
took away the church's ability to control information.
So where does that leave us today? We still have
these two versions of Scientology fighting it
out. We do. On one hand, you have the Scientology
that is presented to the public, a humanitarian
organization, a group that is officially recognized
as a tax -exempt religion in the United States.
A status they won in 1993 after what the sources
describe as a war with the IRS. An all -out war.
They filed, I believe, something like 2 ,400
lawsuits against the IRS until the agency finally
capitulated and granted them the exemption. So
legally, in the U .S., they are of a bona fide
religion. But not everywhere. Not everywhere.
In France, the organization has been convicted
of organized fraud. In Germany, it's monitored
by intelligence agencies as an anti -democratic
cult. In Australia, it was banned in the 60s,
then later recognized as a religion. The legal
status depends entirely on where you are standing.
And meanwhile, the organization is incredibly
wealthy. Billions of dollars in real estate.
Under Miscavige, they've focused on buying historic
buildings in cities around the world and renovating
them into lavish ideal orgs. But reports from
journalists and ex -members suggest that these
massive, beautiful buildings are largely empty.
So they have the money and the property, but
they are losing the people. It seems that way.
The Internet has inoculated the public. If you
Google Scientology today, the first thing you
find isn't a free personality test. The first
thing you find is the hole, you find Xenu, you
find disconnection, and you find fair game. It
brings us right back to the beginning, to a synthesis.
We've looked at the sci -fi origins, the promise
of a talk therapy, the secret space opera theology.
the intense systems of control, and the constant
war with critics. And it creates a fat -fucking
final question for you, the listener. L. Ron
Hubbard wrote in one of his technical bulletins
that the only way to control people is to lie
to them. And yet, in other places, he claimed
to be creating a brand new civilization, a world
where honest beings can have rights. That is
the core contradiction, isn't it? So which version
of Hubbard won? The humanitarian visionary or
the cynical manipulator? That's the question.
Has the organization he created ultimately served
that vision of spiritual freedom he promised?
Or has it become the very thing it claimed to
fight, a mechanism of suppression? The sources
we've examined suggest that for many, it began
as a dream of freedom and ended as a prison of
belief. And for you listening, it makes you think.
Where is that line? At what point does a high
-demand religion with unorthodox beliefs become
what its critics call a thriving cult? That is
something to mull over. Indeed. And as always,
remember, check your sources. Because in a world
of information warfare, the deep dive into knowledge
is your only real defense against manipulation.
Couldn't have said it better myself. That's it
for this deep dive into the source material on
Scientology. We will see you next time.