To learn all about Jimmy Rebel’s (John Aaron Williams – but, he’ll always be Jimmy Rebel to me) Training Center please click on this link:
http://www.scientology-cult.com/knowledge-center/re-opening-the-training-bridge.html
Feel free to share your New Year’s resolutions with some folks who are apt to share agreement with pro-survival ones.
Guido and Marisa
With this letter we are publicly announcing our decision to leave the current Church of Scientology since we believe it doesn’t represent the spiritual freedom that was once expressed by L. Ron Hubbard, instead it perpetuates different purposes and it has introduced substantial alterations in the use of Admin, Ethics and Tech.
These are suppressions that have caused and are continuing to cause sufferings in PCs, Pre OTs, students and staff members at any level.
So, it is our duty to inform.
We are addressing this writing to the entire Scientological field: the top of the management, our friends and parents, and the Scientologists that will have the courage to look, evaluate and act accordingly to what is right for themselves and their lives. Only the truth will set us free, and the price of freedom “constant alertness and constant willingness to fight back”. This is our story.
In 1975 my wife and I started a long adventure in Scientology. We finally found the road that could give us answers to the true spiritual research, those which hide beneath the apparent materialistic world. We suddenly fell in love with this great being that Ron is. His wisdom hit our hearts in a very simple manner. His lessons contained the answers that we were looking for a long time, lifetime after lifetime. Although the essence of these teachings were of great philosophical depth, they were easily applicable to the day to day life enhancing every aspect of it.
So it was that we joined the very first group of Italian Scientologists most of whom had been longtime friends of ours already, and partners of many adventures in that town called Brescia. We love reminiscing on the spirit of that group, the contagion of enthusiasm, the unrestrainable desire of spreading the news of Dianetics and Scientology to the world. The Italian Institution of Applied Technologies in Via Cavallotti in Milano had a very high tone level because this group was made for the most part of creative artists and rebels of the status quo – we could say not much inclined to be regimented. The aesthetic waves were easy to perceive, and that attracted people that would then begin their walk towards higher awareness.
The study and application of Scientology allowed us to better ourselves to create around us a calm and safe atmosphere where we could raise our children; our work, our music and our creations have benefited from it, and we have tried to set an example.
We have done a lot of courses. We have audited a lot of people, we are both NED auditors. We have given many lectures. We started a choir for the Church of the Three Lakes ( Brescia Org). My wife Marisa finished OT 5 and was in the middle of it.
We will always be grateful to L. Ron Hubbard for allowing his technology to be at our disposal. His legacy has permeated our existence and will continue to be a guide for our future. For years we’ve trusted the management of the Church and followed its orders believing that they originated from carefully studied strategies and evaluations made by competent and responsible executives. However, we’ve noted a slow but constant departure from the original purposes as laid down by source:
Over time the religious and spiritual aspect became of lesser importance as the offer of help transformed in continual and forceful demands for money.
The drive to gain religious recognition in Italy has been used and is still today used to gain more materialistic and fiscal benefits instead of just a genuine desire of being legitimate and to gain a sort of a hidden impunity for the exploitations of the work force in various Scientology organizations.
With the advent of the Golden Age of Tech (in fact a subtle invalidation of LRH and of all of those people that had successfully applied Scientology since then) we have witnessed prolonged training, having to redo the same courses 3 times, hence causing a departure from becoming a trained auditor and be able to continue on your own steps on the bridge.
These are just a few examples of the numerous destructive alterations introduced by the current Church. If you’d like a more in-depth analysis of the current situations of the Church of Scientology we would like you to check in full the letter from Garcia (a real Scientologist!) and we invite you to do your own personal research. We believe that Scientologists can distinguish facts from entheta, and do not fall into those A=A=A kinds of generalizations from the reactive back.
We’ve ended our extensive research on truth. It has been pretty painful and at times it was very hard to confront. We had to learn how to separate the wheat from the chaff, find out what was true and what was false. We’d read and spoke to people that we’d known for a long time and had a lot of esteem for, people that left the Church and had done great things for the Church.
We will always be grateful to these people for the precious guidance they offered.
Thank you Francesco, Marty, Mike, Tiziano, Claudio, Renata, etc. We have to give a big acknowledgement to the entire staff of the Independologo. Everyone who writes on these blogs, your job in informing and connecting the dots is really precious and has been the determining factor for the entire movement of Independent Scientologists. We’ve discovered the abuses, the threats, the forced abortions, the beatings, the instigations of violence, the exasperate control, the perversions, the alterations of policy…all situations that were apparently unbelievable – but unfortunately true.
Too many people have spoken…and now there is no more doubts on the fact that THE CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY IS DEAD.
And so we decided to leave the current Church of Scientology because we no more see ourselves in it. We are and always will be Scientologists. We will never compromise on this. And we will no longer spinelessly accept other-determined “truths” in the name of spiritual freedom.
“…And we emerged to gaze upon the stars again”
(Dante Alighieri – La Divina Commedia – Inferno, Canto XXXIV)
Guido and Marisa Minelli
Blogger’s introductory note: The following is a mother’s account of the attempted destruction of her family. I cross flowed much of what Renata relates. It is very timely in that one year ago – almost to the day – on the eve of Christmas 2009 David Miscavige’s anti-Marty mission invaded the Lugli’s home attempting to recruit Claudio and Renata to team up to ambush their son Tiziano – and failing that attempting to get the parents to disconnect from their son. Almost a year later, their other son Flavio was sent into their home as a missionaire working for the same Miscavige mission, spying and attempting to get his parents to disown and disconnect from Tiziano. That they kept their equillibrium through all this doing everything in their power to keep the family together speaks volumes as to their character. Regardless of the outcome, one things is certain, they survived this ordeal with their integrity not only intact but strengthened.
I would like to tell my personal experience in Scientology from a mother’s viewpoint, which is my main beingness, regarding my two sons, Flavio and Tiziano. What I had to live through myself with regards to what has happened to them, was the main reason for our departure from the Church, besides all other facts that we included in our Resignation Letter -(https://markrathbun.wordpress.com/2010/12/08/claudio-and-renata-lugli-are-free/.)
Flavio and Tiziano were born in 1977 and ‘78, and my husband and I were both in the Sea Org at that time, we joined in ’74 and left in ’82. During that time one could still have kids in the Sea Org, and regardless of the amount of work that was absorbing our lives, I have always tried to give my sons all of my attention and communication, trying to give them, to the best of my abilities, an ethical education and a spiritual growth towards their self-determinism and mental sanity.
Flavio always demonstrated to be very loving and caring towards his father and I. As a child his extreme kindness and pureness of heart, coupled with a big urge in helping others was clearly visible. His decision to join the Sea Org was of no surprise to us, in fact we hoped for it at the time, knowing that it completely aligned with his urge toward helping others. We were joyful when we found out he had signed his one billion year contract, because we thought the Sea Org to be the most sane place to be on planet earth.
I was there at Flag in ’97 as I was about to start my Solo Nots Certainty as a public Scientologist, when Flavio came over to give me the news he had activated his SO contract. The way he said it left me in a state of disbelief, and that moment was terribly painful to the degree that still to day 13 years later I can vividly see that scene. Flavio looked at me condescendingly, his eyes were expressing complete resentment toward me, as if all of a sudden I became his biggest enemy. He was completely changed, the situation was incomprehensible and for me, a complete shock.
The last time we said bye to one another we were in complete harmony! What could have happened in these few hours?
I was trying to fill the vacuum thinking that his reaction was caused by an hypothetical wrong handling, maybe some incompetent gave him a PTS interview and indicated to him that I was his Suppressive terminal. Or he might have gotten the beginning of an indoctrination, from some high roller exec with his posh uniform, which told him Tone 40 to cut his umbilical cord to his family so that he could align with the standards of CMO FSO. Or they might have had him sign a pile of confidentiality agreements so that anything he will have said would have been a violation of highly confidential subjects. My mind was fishing for a rational reason, but to no avail.
I remained at Flag at the time, and it took me a whole year to finish the Solo Nots Certainty. It was a horrible year for me, with sleepless nights, an avalanche of wrong indications and wrong C/Ses. Flavio never called me throughout that year and in that entire time I only saw him for maybe 40 minutes, even though we were living only a few blocks from each other. I then decided to “end cycle” on this, telling myself that Flavio will eventually see the mistake he had made and then everything would come back to normal.
How wrong I was…!!!
I think I had committed a big mistake by not dealing with it more aggressively at the time, so that he would have eventually told me what really went down. But there is a reason for this, thanks to all of the repetitive errors of my Case programming, I was completely introverted, PTS, my anchor points were all squashed in and my beingness shrank. These were all errors that have been accumulated starting from ’87, real GAEs, perpetrated by alleged Class XIIs and incompetent C/Sing – which had nothing to do with me, as if he was C/Sing somebody else’s folder.
In 2005, after 18 years in borderline hell and almost as a miracle, I was able to handle this situation with my auditor Cristina, for whom I am still grateful to this day. I took back my once lost life, and at this point I was able to clearly see what situation had developed with Flavio.
Right after this de-PTSness, I tried talking to my son on three occasions, but it seemed impossible: he would get restimulated to the point of becoming ill, he would become so overwhelmed despite the fact that my approaches were really delicate on him.
Only now I am able to understand what really happened: Flavio had certainly received an heavy SRA from HCO CMO (Severe Reality Adjustment – a technique elaborated at a certain point in the SO, by which an individual gets overwhelmed by several people yelling at him, insulting him, etc. with the end result of having shoved in an idea to make him behave in a certain way) and this acted as a real IMPLANT on him.
Throughout his 13 years in the SO, the only relationship we had was “social”. He would call every once in a while and would be extremely brief. His communication was full of good roads fair weather, as if he was always handling an alleged PTS situation on our part, or there were PR phone calls where he would inform us about how everything was amazing at FLAG. These were a few minutes long, stolen time between a short meal, always with the prefix “I don’t have time right now”, “I have muster”, “I gotta do the roll call”, “I have to go handle…” – and every time I asked him anything, the most common answer was “I can’t tell you, it’s confidential”. Especially on this “I can’t tell you” part, LRH says something that is very frightening to me:
“The simplest and most common implant – and its lightest but not least deadly form – is the command to withhold. Implants could be said to be methods of preventing knowledge or communication.” HCOB 11 Apr 82 – Sec Checking Implants
But for us, the most painful thing, was not the very brief phone calls, but that tone of unexpressed resentment that you could sense every time he would speak to us. We understood that that trust, that love and appreciation that he had always treasured for us, had crumbled – and we had to learn how to live with it for 13 long years.
In an effort to alleviate this pain, we were hoping that with time Flavio was going to be able to realize what caused his departure from his own parents, but we were completely unaware on how the Sea Org had completely transformed since the time we had lived it (and on this part alone we could say so much…).
Many times Flavio got sick, one of which was really severe. His health was getting so precarious since he joined, all the time friends would come back from Flag telling us how Flavio was spending sleepless nights, especially during the infamous and unchecked fund raising for the Basics, and the never ending IAS regging. I don’t’ know if many of you know this, but every FLAG staff has a weekly regging quota that has to be met, no matter what, and until he or she reaches it, they cannot go to bed.
If we were to give you details, it would take a book to express what me and my husband went through in these years, but we are more and more convinced that in these 13 years, Flavio had received so much mental conditioning, and not only directed towards us, that we utterly believe that his mind had been stolen by his “church”, the same church that had STOLEN OUR SON.
The events surrounding Flavio that follow, cross with what was happening to his brother Tiziano.
Tiziano attested to Clear in 1990 at Flag. In 2001 he went back to the base for his OT Preps and they put him back on the CCRD to verify its validity. He re-attested in a new unit of time Clear (actually a state called The State Of Clear – CERTIFIED). In ’08 he went back at Flag to end cycle on his Preps and route onto his OT Levels, but he got hit with an R-Factor that he is not Clear – unfortunately this is pretty much in fashion these days. I’m not going to explain the details of this event, for he wrote a great account on all that happened on his post (https://markrathbun.wordpress.com/2010/01/21/tiziano-lugli-breaks-free/), but I’d like to add what me and Claudio had to go through for the next year and a half because of this.
We knew that what Tiziano was going thorough was extremely delicate, so about 2 or 3 times a day while at Flag, we would talk to him, and he would tell us what was happening. We were always confident that the truth would give good indicators, and that Tiziano would never oppose to the truth, no matter what that was. But as time passed, so was any progress on this cycle, until it just got stuck; even though Tiziano did more than could be expected, and we were witnesses of all this as it was occurring. Sec Checks were the only auditing action he was permitted to do, as we know being the number one auditing action ordered by C/Ses at Flag, and YES, Tiziano had to be REFORMED, he had to stop giving FSO penalty stats by giving Red Tags repeatedly at the examiner. Nothing came from Claudio writing a detailed KR to RTC Int in order to debug the situation. We were all beyond overwhelmed by now, especially since we knew that Tiziano did the impossible, not only financially, to try to get onto his OT Levels, and endured beyond any limit of toleration.
We could hear him distraught, as he was confessing to us that he saw his Bridge shutting in front of his eyes, for he would have never compromised his certainty on being Clear and he would have never been put on Dianetics.
After all this he decided to be done with these evaluations and handlings, and got the hell out of Flag with very bad indicators, telling everyone to go screw themselves, and once back in LA he requested his folders to be sent to Senior C/S Int.
In the meantime Tiziano and Jamie’s wedding date arrived, and we all decide to take a brake from all this and go celebrate this event in great harmony.
And here Flavio comes back into the scene in 2009.
After pulling many strings we were able to get him to participate to the wedding. As soon as he arrived, he urged us to go read the Freedom Mag, in answer to what was happening in Clearwater with what the SP Times had published. It was pretty logical for us to then go look at what the SP Times actually wrote to fully understand the situation. Once we looked at the content and watched every Video online, we told Flavio that if the data that is being exposed were true, we all would find ourselves in a huge mess!
Back at Flag Flavio reported on everything that is nowadays considered the biggest crime that a Scientologist could do: GO ON THE INTERNET.
Right after, Marion Pow and Mike Sutter, showed up in front of our store in Brescia ITALY, all the way from Los Angeles. These are two people that work directly for COB – their purpose was to try to have us – two sinners – redeem ourselves, by first of all expressing their disapproval for the fact that we had looked on the Internet and we got all of the “entheta”. They tried to obliterate the image of the “Number One SP Marty Rathbun” with a huge Dead Agent pack, since he was considered to be “the WHO” of the whole situation.
Our answer to this was that due to our current case condition and having achieved a state whereby NO ONE can tell us what to do or not to do, we didn’t need anyone’s approval regarding the decisions we take. We took the time to instead press on the fact that our sons, for one reason or another, have been completely messed up by the church. And knowing their authority we requested immediate actions: for Flavio to make sure his health condition would go back to at least normal, and that whatever the absurdity that went down with Tiziano was, would once and for all get handled.
The whole back and forth – merry go round – lasted till 4AM. And do you know with which sentence did Marion ended the conversation? The same one she used to begin: “but why did you guys go on the Internet?”
Meanwhile in LA, where Tiziano and Jamie live, the resignation letter of the renowned and Oscar winning director Paul Haggis hit the news. Tiziano wanted to look deeper into it, landed onto Marty’s Blog. The rest is pretty much known. Tiziano and Jamie got on a plane and go to Texas.
Marion Paow, Mike Sutter and this time along with a third guy, Hansuili Stahli, showed up at our door steps in Italy in the middle of the night. They immediately informed Claudio that Tiziano and Jamie were just with Marty in Texas, and that the situation got out of their control, that his folders where look at by Ray Mithoff, and that Tiziano was absolutely NOT CLEAR, but that without any doubt Marty told him he was.
Right after popping out Marty’s SP Declare, now 20 pages long, they started telling Claudio what an incredibly out ethics person our son was, and they wanted to show him Tiziano’s crimes contained in his Folders that they brought along.
This is classical OSA operation: DEFAMATION.
I was already in bed that night, so I didn’t have to receive that entheta impact, as my husband did through that nasty request. Claudio refused categorically to look into Tiziano’s folders, telling them that he didn’t have any interest in knowing any content of it for it is CONFIDENTIAL, and that it would have certainly not changed the opinion we had of our son, because for us he’s always been an open book.
When Claudio told me all about the meeting, I expressed the desire to not see them for the entire time they spent in Italy – from the 23rd to the 31st of December.
I found their approach to be beyond anti-spiritual, I did not want to have anything to do with such people that didn’t even take any responsibility for what FSO had caused Tiziano, letting him leave completely BIs. But here they stood, with their weapons ready to shoot at him and us as well if we didn’t reform. They asked Claudio what kind of a behavior would he be having with Tiziano, in the event that he wouldn’t repent and reform by doing the A to E steps – hence doing a subtle introduction to the subject of disconnection. Knowing exactly where they were going to go with this, and before they asked for a formal disconnection agreement, he told them that we would have NEVER and NEVER will disconnect from our son.
They left soon after, but that was only the beginning. As a matter of fact, the subject of disconnection, was once again brought up by his brother Flavio, an act that was gruesome to say the least.
We got a phone call from Flavio inviting us to have a video conference via Skype, a planned meeting a day in advance. We talked to him that night on the phone for about an hour and on Skype the next day for two and a half hours, and the theme of the conversation was only one: convincing us to disconnect from Tiziano, a discussion he had been taking from several angles. It was pretty hard for us watching this family massacre as it was about to unfold: using our son Flavio to convince us to shoot at his brother Tiziano. Claudio and I found each other in an atmosphere that resembled a gangster movie more then an ecclesiastical scenario, with no respect whatsoever to unbreakable family ties.
Flavio was reading us aloud exerts form the HCOB PTS and Disconnection, the same one that the so called liar Tommy Davis was claiming didn’t exist in front of millions of viewers on CNN. Our efforts in trying to explain that LRH cancelled it long ago were in vain. As soon as the intimidation tactic failed to get anywhere with us, including telling us the consequences we would be facing in the event we would not disconnect with Tiziano, plan B from OSA came into play: MORE DEFAMATION.
I can only tell you that as soon as Flavio started shooting defamation bullets against his brother, I started screaming like a mad woman until I literally lost my voice. I screamed about FSO, having ruined both of my children, I screamed at him for making me pass 13 years of pain and sorrow as I was noticing his progressive derangement since he joined the SO, I screamed about FSO asking me to destroy my own family with disconnection. At this point Flavio got silent, and changed tactic, going full on good roads and fair weather. I mean they all got silent, was OSA thinking we were the dumbest, stupidest folks on earth? They thought we didn’t know they were behind the computer directing every move Flavio was making? Who knows why the line would suddenly drop and be back only a few minutes later… They didn’t however make Flavio disconnect from us. I guess they thought it would be more detrimental to do so, as well as we had not been declared yet, they actually started having him act “really nice”.
Because we didn’t disconnect from Tiziano and we went on the Internet, OSA was monitoring us from 360 degrees. Here is the rundown:
– Sending over to our shop about a dozen OTVIIIs, and another dozen calling us over the phone.
– When we would cross the path with other Scientologists in town they would change their way as not to bump into us. (apparently the ones who were not briefed to do OSA’s bidding, were instructed to stay away from us so as not to become educated.)
– After 5 years of not hearing from my auditor at Flag, I all of a sudden get a phone call from her.
– An OSA bot named Gloria, that works for them as an auditor, came to my shop trying to handle me into going in session with her.
– Numerous times I’ve noticed being followed by PIs and others using Cell Phones to record my conversations.
– A dear friend of ours was barred from talking to us, because we were on OSA INT lines.
– Flavio was being used to monitor us: it was very evident, although he kept trying to be as normal as he could, and his communications was carefully planned, but you can’t fool a mother!
But now it all starts to get juicier! Flavio has recently come to Italy because his grandma (my mother) was dying and had expressed her desire to see him after so many years and to finally meet his wife.
Once in Italy we were noticing Flavio to be spying on us. He was looking at my cell phone, Claudio’s phone, the home phone, both of the house computers, and was asking his father if he was still going on the Internet. All of this thinking that we wouldn’t notice him doing it. He’s very naïve, at times I would get a call and he would try to check caller’s ID of people calling me, I really started to get upset at this point, not at him necessarily, but at those terminals that forced Flavio to do this kind of a job, completely in opposition to his beingness…and he obviously got caught doing it, which was another BIG mistake for OSA.
Besides what could have been the reasons they gave Flavio to coax him into becoming a rat, I was sure that he didn’t feel any good about doing what he was doing to his parents, hence his continual Missed Withholdy face.
At a certain point Flavio asked me some very personal question that denoted parts of my PC Folder were given to him, I realized the defamation tactic had been played on myself. That was IT! I was furious, because the evil that I had been perceiving, coupled with the clear vision of what grim last resource had been used by OSA, made me decide…It’s OVER! I’m gonna depart from all this evil.
So we decided to tell Flavio WHO his FRIENDS were.
We were completely done playing a game that lasted a whole year full of third party that had only as its purpose to destroy our family.
But by his many reactions: “I can’t be listening to this…” – “don’t tell me anything…” – “I’m not interested…”, it was evident that his thoughts were blocked.
His ability to decide and analyze was reduced to ZERO.
He had been programmed to such a degree that he would reject anything that would have not been aligned to that programming.
He left to Flag the next day.
Here ends my story of Flavio, a stolen son.
It does not end however, the pain and the rage of the betrayed trust that still lingers inside of us.
RENATA LUGLI
by Luis Garcia
It was a typical fall morning in Southern California. Sunny and comfortably chilly, a few cirrus clouds high above a light layer of smog. I was on my way to visit Marty at “Casablanca.”
Once we were at 34,000 feet, I thought about what I wanted to address with Marty. Let’s see… I was not ill, and haven’t been for years. I felt I was doing fairly well, my business was going well, my family was doing fine. I was fine. I did have a couple of concerns, but they were not major. So why was I going to see him? I concluded I didn’t fully know, but somehow I knew I should.
At the curbside, he approached me from behind and the large black cowboy hat he wore threw me off a bit. “This is Texas” – I thought. As soon as we greeted each other it started; a free flowing torrent of exchanging experiences, ideas, viewpoints, opinions, data and stories, that continued through dinner with his wife Monique, who by the way, is the most gracious host and excellent cook, and culminated by the side of a fire out on the deck.
My accommodations were the entire lower level of the house and included a kitchen, and a living room. There was also a 5‐shelf cabinet filled with books as varied in subject as items in a flea market. As I was taking it all in I thought these were the best accommodations I’ve ever had in connection with an auditing cycle. I was happy to be there.
The next morning I cooked breakfast for a very appreciative Marty, who exalted the qualities of my omelet. Soon after we were starting the first session, and a wave of by‐passed charge rose to the surface as soon as I picked up the cans. That’s when it hit me how bad I needed a session.
During the ensuing four days at Casablanca a transformation developed. Session after session, the effects of the Black Dianetics and Reverse Scientology disguised as “Standard Tech” I had so faithfully paid for and devoted myself to receive, were being located, inspected and as‐ised, leaving in its wake a full and deep understanding. Gone were the counter‐survival computations adopted while “going up the Bridge to OT.”
And in its place I regained my full self‐determinism and clarity of mind to effectively be able to postulate the future. Gone were the accumulated evaluations and invalidations received as part and parcel of every interaction with the church. And in its place I found a peace and inner happiness that evidently is native in me. Gone were the multitude of instances in which I had to choose to either “go up the Bridge to OT” or agree to something I knew was a basic violation of my own integrity.
And in its place… I found myself again. One of the greatest sessions was the one where I located the first time I chose to violate my integrity and agreed with some worthless arbitrary order from the church, again, in order to “go up the Bridge to OT.” This led to all kinds of realizations about how I must never invalidate my own knowingness, must never deny myself, must never sell my soul, must never compromise with my own reality, must never…
Ron knew about this all along. In the lecture “Statics and Motions and Axioms 1‐14, “ of 9 October 1951, he says:
There is almost no limit to what a human being can do as long as he doesn’t have this variety of stuff thrown at him in the guise of Affinity, Communication and Reality. People are postulating new realities for him. And every time he accepts one of these new realities, he’s sort of sunk.
But he’s all right up until the moment–he can have any god’s quantity of engrams or anything else–he’s perfectly all right until he accepts one of these postulates that is handed to him, and adopts it to himself and by his own self-determinism says, “Well, from here on that’s the way it is.” That’s a little boy suddenly saying to Mama, “Uh, I give up. I… I’ll mind, I’ll mind.” He goes out of valence, he ceases to be alive. He’s hit a static. He goes out of valence (and you can watch this either in yourself or in preclears) and his reality goes boom! Perceptics shut off.
For four days, four magic, memorable days, I lived life in a way never before
experienced. The alternating of amazing sessions with life‐changing realizations, with an intense and free communication exchange and plenty of laughter with Marty out of session, has truly given me a renewed purpose, a new viewpoint, a new attitude, a new me.
Four days were enough to repair the ravages of seven years of other‐determined actions while in the church. And there is not even the slightest scar left as a reminder of the atrocities.
Marty Rathbun is the best auditor I’ve ever had, and I have had many. His
comprehensive understanding of the fundamentals and basics of auditing, his natural TRs, his impeccable auditing comm cycle, and his ability to observe the Pc are such that one cannot help but get powerful results from the properly and standardly applied Tech he delivers. It is easily observable that he just loves auditing people with a passion! “Your win is my win,” he’d say often.
Marty also has another great ability. He listens. And thus he learns. He learns because he can comfortably be there and examine other viewpoints without prejudice. He has vast knowledge so he naturally imparts wisdom, but doesn’t overpower one’s own wisdom, opinion or viewpoint. He is always learning from others, and so he continues to grow.
I am back. I am better than back. Because as Marty skillfully worked with me, I began to regain OT abilities I had gained during OT VII and VIII, that I actually didn’t know I had.
So Marty, my hat is off to you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you!
And davey, next time you feel a pressure on your right side, or a nagging headache, you may just want to wonder, “Is that Garcia stretching?”
I am closer to you than you may know…
Luis Garcia
A protection racket is an extortion scheme whereby a criminal group or individual coerces other less powerful entities to pay money, allegedly for protection services against external threats (usually violence or property damage, and sometimes perpetrated by the racketeers themselves).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_racket
I cannot think of a better term to describe Miscavige’s standard operating procedure. Inside, the apparent aim – like run of the mill organized crime – is money. But, Miscavige’s operation is far more insidious than the mafia. He also coerces blind, ignoratant loyalty. And when one finally decides to stop playing the ponzi scheme mark, and exerts some outside independence, his racket steps it up a few notches with the sole aim of extorting fear and consequent silence.
Recently, Miscavige mounted a full-scale offensive in my direction. Anonymous emails have been sent to independents far and wide accusing me of all manner of lies, including auditing with an r/sing meter. On that score, please see David St Lawrence’s post on his blog putting that lie to rest (http://possiblyhelpfuladvice.com/?p=1363 ). RS (Radical Scientology) has also sent the infamous Private Eye Lil’ Dave Lebow (aka Lebeau, aka Lubow) to a number of independent pre-Clears and pre-OTs whom I have audited and otherwise counseled.
I have heard of a few guesses by friends as to why now. One, I have recently been involved in assisting certain Independents with turning RS legal threats into legal offensives. Another theory, this is in response to my recent start of the full exposure of the black ops techniques and network of RS’s OSA. Another, a number of OT’s and Opinion Leaders within Scientology fields have been announcing their independence on the blog over the past couple weeks.
While it may be a combination of all the above, I think the following factor trumps them all. We are really becoming quite proficient at rapidly and thoroughly reversing Miscavige’s Black Dianetics and Reverse Scientology techniques, and rehabilitating abilities once suppressed by RS. This is particularly true and marked with OTs – OT VIIs and OT VIIIs. This is a very scary development for Miscavige. Holy cats! Real, live OTs!
LRH describes the phenomena in HCOB OT Levels:
Pyschotics deal with doing people in. Their whole mission in life is destruction.
They inveigh against lower-level gains and seek to discredit them since these run contrary to their aberrated purpose.
But when it gets to Clears and OT levels, psychos go berserk!
They are, it happens, terrified of punishment for their own crimes.
The thought of someone being sensible or powerful enough to punish them (the way they would do) is more than they can stand.
You can, with the utmost certainty, identify a criminal psychotic by the way he vilifies or degrades or seeks to stop Clears and OTs from coming into existence.
Hence, the protection racket on steroids. They are attempting to enturbulate through intimidation. They are not achieving their aim in the slightest with a single one of my friends. But, after what has occurred over the last two weeks I feel compelled to comment on an important aspect of all this. I think it might help those who might get contacted directly or indirectly put things into context.
First some background to demonstrate I am not just talking theoretically when I use terms like “protection racket” and “organized crime.”
From 1982 through 1986 I was engaged in an investigation into the attempted looting of LRH’s personal bank account via counterfeit checks. The investigation lead into organized crime in the New England area. I dealt directly and at odds with several veteran organized crime figures. I ultimately testified in the trial that resulted in the extortion conviction of the “financial wizard” of New England’s organized crime syndicate in a related case.
Two years ago I dealt with organized crime on the street level. Through a forty-plus article investigative series I assisted local law enforcement in driving adjuncts of the Mexican Mafia out the county in which I live.
In both investigations my life was threatened by organized crime figures. I know how organized crime outfits create and profit off terror. I also know the tiny clinkers their leaders call their souls and what despicable cowards they are outside the pack.
They operate on an instinctive, beast pack-mentality level. You may have heard the adage about how an aggressive dog can sense fear, and sensing it becomes far more aggressive. It is precisely the same mechanism at play with organized criminals. Run or cower and they’ll have you hiding in your house and paying protection fees in no time. Stand up and see them for what they are, and they’ll scatter like cockroaches when the light is switched on.
Now, here are three facts that lead me to conclude David Miscavige has become nothing more than a organized crime boss wanna be.
You heard this week from Lori Hodgson. I’ve been informed that the Allender character that creepily assaulted her and sleazily inferred beatings were in the offing, is an OT VIII in good standing with Miscavige. Remember, Allender cased the place, hid out surveilling and ambushed Lori. To pull that stunt on a woman who survived the treatment they gave her is pure cowardice and moral depravity. It is what RS expects of an “OT VIII” (which incidentally, is no small part of the Black Dianetics and Reverse Scientology that is practiced at the “top of” the RS bridge).
Two weeks ago when I was on the west coast, like clockwork, Miscavige’s OSA sent an operative to visit Mosey (after a hard day’s work) at our home. As per usual he was a creep, with a creepy beingness, a creepy smirk, and a creepy sort of message. Every time I am gone, Miscavige sends such an emissary. Of course Mosey, as per usual,handled the operative much like Lori did with Allender in San Jose, well, much like a cockroach. But please note, they always come when I am away. Never has one of his boys come near my place when I am home.
Then this past week Luis Garcia visited Casablanca. Right about the time we started shinin’ like Lazlo and Rick, Luis receives a call from his wonderful wife Rocio that one Lil’ Dave Lebow came calling at his home, nearly 2,000 miles away. Rocio gave him the cockroach treatment, making it crystal clear she did not wish for him to return. For the next 24 hours she was overtly surveilled by Miscavige’s creeps, and the next night (with Luis still 2000 miles away) the Lil’ depraved one returned.
Now, consider this. Sudden Sam Domingo and Mosey both witnessed a few minute phone call I had with Lebow several months ago. I told him to tell his namesake employer to take a look at this unseemly, juvenile – and quite frankly cowardly – behavior. That is, I called him out on RS’s already prevelant practice of running their Operation Creep Out ops exclusively on women who were alone. The punk didn’t even deny it…instead stammered until I got bored and ended the call.
So, based on FACTS that I have witnessed – some of which I have related above – I firmly conclude that Miscavige has degenerated into a full-time dramatization of his life-long goal of becoming an organized crime boss. He always wanted to become Michael Corleone. Problem is, he wound up no better than Tony Montana.
Now, to the point I guess. I’ll tell you all what I tell people individually who receive this treatment.
Miscavige’s objective is to get into your head. If he does, he wins and you lose. If he doesn’t, you win and he loses. SIMPLE and PLAIN.
A little wisdom from Tao Te Ching:
The best general enters the mind of his enemy.
Being a good general is as easy as breathing. Lest anyone mistake this post for feeding the trolls (in this case DM and RS OSA), the only reason I bother with it is to impart some advice that has served me quite well over the past couple years. Again from the Tao:
There is no greater illusion than fear,
no greater wrong than preparing to defend yourself,
no greater misfortune than having an enemy.
Whoever can see through all fear
I’ve never met anyone who met Hy Levy who didn’t like him. I feel the same way. Hy took the time to write a fairly lengthy account of his decades in the church. He provides a very interesting look at the internal workings of the Flag Service Organization in particular. While longer than most posts, I think it is well worth the read. Welcome Hy! It is great to have you with us.
My name is Hy Levy.
I was staff at FSO for almost 24 years and routed out in June 2009. I have been “under the radar” since then but now I have decided to take a stand, as my silence has helped to support the current DM regime too long.
Here is my story. I hope it doesn’t bore you. It wasn’t boring living it.
I got into Scientology in 1974 when a San Francisco Org Foundation staff member, who was moonlighting where I worked, gave me a contact assist when I injured myself on a piece of old equipment that malfunctioned.
She saw I was in pain and asked if she could do something that might help.
I said “YES!!!ANYTHING!!”. She gave me a contact assist that produced results in seconds that I couldn’t explain with all my knowledge of the physical sciences.
I was a computer programmer at the time and was very MEST oriented (not in terms of accumulated MEST as I had almost none) in my view of life. Everything was explained by the physical sciences. I was raised an orthodox Jew but had stopped practicing years before and had NO belief in anything spiritual. I felt the only answers were in the physical universe where you could see, touch, feel or measure them quantitatively. Nothing else had any meaning or value.
The results of the contact assist changed all that. It was something I couldn’t explain with everything I knew. My finger had been caught in the gear chain of a machine and was cut and bleeding. I was in extreme pain. Within 30 seconds the bleeding stopped and the pain was gone. What the hell was that?? It shattered my stable data about life and explaining all things in a material sense.
This staff member asked if I had ever heard of Scientology. I hadn’t so she didn’t have to handle any antagonism or anything. I asked, almost as if I was repeating a patter in a drill, “Where can I find out more about this?”. She directed me to the local org (SFO). I took a personality test, had it evaluated and that was it.
The Div 6 reg tried to sell me the comm course, which was $ 25 at the time. Being fully materialistically oriented, I “knew” that you couldn’t get anything of any value for $ 25. So I said “What else you got?”. The reg told me about HQS. I asked how much and was told $ 100. I was making about $ 125 a week at the time (before taxes) so to me this was significant money. I said “I’ll take it!”.
I started course. The staff member who gave me the touch assist to begin with was the Foundation Div 6 Word Clearer. My first night on course, after a short amount of time studying, she pulled me over for word clearing. This care along with the word clearing tech was amazing.
I continued studying and a day or so later the sup asked me if would be willing to be a pc for another student. I was amazed at my good fortune. I considered it an incredible gift that somehow I was being given by whatever good luck the Gods had granted me. I of course said “YES!!”. (Much later on I realized the student needed a pc that was not in the middle of any other auditing to do his practical on.)
At that time HQS required that you deliver a full battery of objectives to another student. We were running a process that required the pc to alternately touch an object in the room and then a body part, over and over. My student auditor had me touch my arm and then a table, my arm again then the table again. Something “strange” started to happen and I must have had an odd look on my face as the auditor asked “What’s happening?”. I really was puzzled myself as to what was happening. I could only describe it in a way that didn’t even make sense to me at first. I told him, “Well, you see, I touch the table and I know how far away the table is because I know how long my arm is. But the table is somehow much further away. But I know it isn’t because I can reach it with my arm.” I babbled on about this for a moment or two and then I went into shock. “I” was on the ceiling looking down at the table. I had never heard of the concept of exteriorization and as I explained earlier I was completely oriented to MEST explanations for things. It took me a moment to realize that something I could not explain in physical terms was happening. I was exterior. With perception. I then thought back to a time period in my childhood where this had happened but no one knew what I was experiencing and I was scared because everything looked so far away. At that time I ran around the house almost crying, looking at familiar things but that were now not where they should have been relative to where “I” was. My Mother simply calmed me down by whatever means Mothers have for doing these things. It worked and the problem went away. It was that day in that auditing session when I realized what had occurred. I had gone exterior with perception.
Well this was a whole new ball game!
I continued on course and within 2 weeks of my finding out about Scientology, a Sea Org recruiter came to my local org. I spoke with her at length. She explained to me what the Sea Org was and the commitment involved. This didn’t bother me. She explained about being acknowledged and validated for work when it was well done. This was my “go button”. I felt I could be happy sweeping floors as long as I was validated when I did a good job (and I still feel this way to this day).
I signed up and quit my job and drove from San Francisco to LA to join the Sea Org. I will fast forward a bit here. I got married in the Sea Org. My wife and I were not happy with the way things turned out to be (I had been in just under 2 years) and we devised a plan to blow and did so. This may have been due to o/w’s but I also had had some bad experiences with ethics conditions being misapplied and how things were in general. For whatever reason we left.
About 4 years later my wife and I separated and divorced. Up to that time we were paying on our freeloader debts what we could. We didn’t have much money but each week we sent a payment of $ 10 each towards our debts. One day we saw we had made over 100 payments each, still had a long way to go to pay our debts (like another $3000 for myself alone) and then looked at what it would take to pay for the Bridge once we were done with the freeloader bill. We went into overwhelm at the thought and gave up and stopped making payments. Some time after that we separated and divorced for reasons having nothing to do with Scientology).
I was totally disconnected from the Church and making a decent living by then. I was contacted by an FSM who said there was a program being run that reduced an ex-SO members debt based on years of service. This really indicated to me and once again my “go button” of being validated and acknowledged for work well done was pushed. My debt was still about $3000. This program reduced it to about $2000. I immediately went to the New York Org (I was living in Brooklyn at the time), paid my debt in full, took the amnesty that existed at the time (this was around 1980), and then paid for my Bridge up to Clear as well.
We will fast forward again here. I made it to Dianetic Clear, went to ASHO and AOLA to do my OT Preps, Eligibility, OT I-V (doing 3 L’s along the way) and then to Flag for OT VI and VII. Along the way I had miracle wins regarding blowing a full blown case of arthritis (at age 28 this was pretty severe and affected every joint in my body) as well as a very painful infection that had recurred about every 6 months for about 8 years (and for which doctors said there was no lasting cure). So I was definitely getting gains from my auditing.
While I was at Flag I was once again recruited to join the Sea Org at FSO (it was known that I had blown the S.O. before but somehow we got around this). I had other out-quals for FSO staff so had to petition the GO for OK to join staff (this was 1985). This was accepted. I completed OT VI and went home with my materials to start auditing on OT VII while doing my “Project Prepare” to come back to FSO as staff.
When I got home, having been at Flag for about 6 months, I had no money, no job and had to move fast to just be able to survive. I exactly applied the conditions (a subject I had no problem with at that time but which later became a nightmare with the various misapplications that occurred). Within 3 weeks I got a job working for a guy who, last time I had seen him, hated my guts. For some reason he was able to put this aside and hired me. This was a short term contract as a computer programmer which at least paid the bills. This contract was for a possible project that never really got off the ground and lasted only a month.
By that time, my former client that I had before I went to Flag, and who had said that they couldn’t re-hire me when I came back due to budget cuts, etc., contacted me. They were in trouble on a large project and told me to “name my price”. Wow, I thought, this OT VII stuff really works (along with proper application of conditions and the little admin and finance policies I knew and used).
Meanwhile I began waffling about activating my S.O. Contract. I was then making about $ 15,000 a month (in 1985 that was like a King’s ransom), finally decided to re-join the S.O. at FSO and did so in November 1985.
I was FSO staff until I routed out on June 25, 2009.
I have detailed some of my experiences leading up to this to make it clear that I was a winning Scientologist who had gotten many benefits from the application of Scientology to my life.
My first post was as a D of P in the NOTS HGC. As I had been in computers for many years, I had a love for all things technical. I was only a level 0 auditor and really had no strong aspirations to become an auditor. I had NO CLUE what a D of P actually did, but I learned as fast as I could. I made really stupid mistakes in the beginning, but I had a wonderful C/S that was my junior who crammed me beautifully on each thing I did wrong. I learned a lot from those crams…things that to this day still stand me in good stead.
Being technical (computer-wise) yet having no Scientology tech training to speak of and having to run a number of NOTS auditors, interview PC’s, etc. etc. I decided that the only way to really know what was going on and what I should be doing was to read the NOTS pack. That’s right. A Level 0 auditor studying NOTS. As I was on OT VII, access to these materials was not an issue (especially as I was the D of P). I burned the midnight oil, studying late at night and during meal breaks. I found the material fascinating. It also made me better able to understand difficulties my auditors might be having and also to interview my PC’s better (I had an interviewer who worked under me, but I did the more searching, “case cracking” type interviews myself).
All sounds great right? So where did things go wrong? There were many incidents along the way and I will recount them as I recall them, not necessarily in the order in which they happened.
I took pride in my post. My stats were not always the best, but I did everything possible to make my PC’s win and to handle things when they weren’t. One of my auditors commented to me once that I was the best “interview D of P” he had ever seen. Not everyone agreed with my approach to the post. I felt, as D of P, my main function, as LRH laid out, was to be a “traffic cop”. To me that meant doing anything to keep the results going the way they should. Understanding my auditors and keeping them winning. Taking care of my PC’s and handling them well. Some of my seniors, looking at my stats of Well Done auditing hours, felt I should be tougher on my auditors. I was supposed to yell at them, run them hard, etc. I really couldn’t bring myself to do that on a regular basis, although I did fall prey to that more than I care to remember. I am not proud of that part of my history.
To illustrate the divergent views I held relative to my seniors about how to do my post, I will relate one incident. This was in the late 80’s or maybe even 1990. I had found an old pack of hand typed transcripts of talks given by LRH. One I vividly recall was titled “LRH Talk to SNR C/S 1970”. Here, among other things, LRH described a hat of the D of P in interviewing PC’s to get to the bottom of any difficulties they were having in their auditing. It required use of the meter, following up on reads and pulling strings so the C/S could unravel where things had gone wrong. I loved this lecture. One day, I had a PC who was in major case trouble. I went over with the C/S what they wanted to know, was given a set of questions from the C/S and the latitude to use the references I knew to get the product. It was a long interview. About 2 hours if memory serves me. By the end of the interview the PC was very relieved and I felt I had gotten the product the C/S wanted. The interview’s purpose was not to crack the case, but to find out what no one could figure out as to what was going on with the case. I got that product, as later confirmed by the C/S and how well their auditing went after that.
When I came out of the interview, a senior org exec was waiting for me, fuming that I had been in an interview that long. She called it “squirrel” and was incensed that I had left the HGC “unmanned” for so long a time. She demanded to know what reference I was applying. In fact, she was really saying there was no reference and that I was a “squirrel”. When I tried to give her the exact reference that was from LRH that covered what I did, she wouldn’t hear of it and ripped my face off.
This, along with other incidents, was what caused me to feel I didn’t belong there any longer.
Then there was the time, in about 1991 I think, when the org was under heavy ethics. It was announced that each day at lunch muster an individual would be sent to the RPF. This was insane and reminiscent of some kind of NAZI purge. Each day we would go to muster, knowing someone, anyone, it could even be you, would find out they were being sent to the RPF. This was for anything that ran the gamut of the ethics book codes from errors, on up. After seeing the kinds of insignificant reasons that a person was sent, each person then went into terror knowing any mistake they made could be a reason for being sent to the RPF. And you wouldn’t know about it or have a clue until it was announced to the whole crew at muster that day. The person was then carted off by security then and there to the RPF. You can imagine what the atmosphere was like.
Even with all this evidence that things were not as they should be in a Scientology org, I, as did most other staff members, just buckled down and resolved to do their jobs so perfectly that they could not be the subject of such handling.
In 1993, while I was still a D of P, we had just moved into a newly renovated space in the Sand Castle. I was told I was getting a new auditor, who was formerly staff at Int, and that I had “better have a line up for him” (of pc’s to audit). In those days the most unconscionable overt a D of P could commit was to have an idle auditor who didn’t have a PC. PC volume was a bit light at the time so I couldn’t take any existing pc’s from any other auditor’s line up. I was committed to the fact that I would solve this problem so that everyone would be happy with me. As I was told this in the morning, with the implications that the auditor could arrive any minute, I began assigning new pc’s as they arrived to his line up. I had gotten I think 3 real pc’s arrived, through their interviews, folders programmed and ready to go. Still the auditor had not shown up. At this time there was also a new rule that any pc who did not go in session that day, FOR ANY REASON, had to be reported to DM who was there at the base with a whole INT mission.
As the day wore on and the auditor did not show up (I had no control over this as he was a “gift” from DM to FSO), the PC’s I had assigned started complaining about not having gone in session. With the rule that all pc’s had to go in session or else, I began to get worried.
Finally Marc Ingber, who I believe was CO CMO INT at that time was in my HGC and was asking for the number of PC’s who had not gone in session. I was a bit self-destructive at this point, and rather than not include some pc’s in the count that maybe I could have validly excluded, I counted every pc who had not gone in session, and I mean EVERY PC. I think the number was something like 22. Even 1 PC would have been cause for a dressing down, but 22?? So, of course he looked at the scheduling board and saw that I had a line up for this new auditor with 3 pc’s on his line up, none of whom had gone in session. He ripped my face off for assigning pc’s to this auditor when he “hasn’t even routed onto lines as FSO staff” (a new concept I had never heard of in my almost 8 years at FSO) and wasn’t even my staff yet. In my feeble defense I said something like “It wasn’t my intention to keep those pc’s from going in session”. His response was “I’m not here to discuss your case!!!” (I guess this was alluding to some kind of FPRD tech to do with intentions, not what I was at all trying to communicate). This little interaction only served to push the wedge in deeper to separate my views from those of my seniors and INT management. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t was a phrase that came to mind.
Then there was the time when Big League Sales’s (a book recommended by LRH for reg training and was on all Pro Reg Course checksheets) use of how to handle “bird dogs” got me in trouble.
A “bird dog” is anyone who gives a sales person a lead on a prospect who later buys something. It was a tool, according to BLS, that was vital to a sales person’s production. It even spelled out that they were to be given monetary rewards whenever someone they “bird dogged” to a sales person (reg) paid for something.
This was a system that was “in” at FSO and sanctioned all up and down the line. The reges each week would keep track of these “bird dogs”, a specific percentage was used for the commission amount they were paid, a PO was submitted with the specifics of the cycles involved and the money was paid to the reg who then presented it to the “bird dog”. All above board and represented for exactly what it was. As a D of P, my pc’s needed to re-sign. It was something that was survival for my HGC as I then had more pc’s to audit and the auditor’s were not then idle as a result. I got very good at this. I didn’t do it for the commissions, nor did I even keep track or expect it. It was kind of forced on me by the reges. I admit I didn’t object to it and enjoyed the bit of extra money it gave me. I am merely trying to state that I did not instigate it nor did I even go after it. It was just the system that was used.
One day, an admin person from the reg office came to ask me, regarding a list of pc’s who paid the prior week, which ones I was responsible for so they could calculate the commissions. When the person was in the HGC, Bitty Miscavige (not sure of her post at the time, but somewhere high up in CMO INT) was there also and she asked her what she was doing there. She explained very matter-of-factly why she was there. Bitty turned to me and said in a VERY angry tone of voice “If I get one more report about you I will personally route you to the RPF!!!!” Up to that time I was not in any ethics trouble so this was a bit of a “skipped gradient” regarding ethics. I was terrified at the time.
At this time there was also a heavy ethics atmosphere at the base (again this was around ’91 – ’93 time period) and each night the entire crew went to a briefing where COB detailed the items that were discovered that day about out-ethics on the base. That night the subject was me. I was named as if I was doing something illegal, out-ethics and off-policy and as if it was something I was hiding that had now been exposed. It was made into such a crime that the gasps from the rest of the crew were loudly audible at the mention of the heinous out-ethics I was involved in. It was as if I was the only person doing this and as if it was all very hush-hush and a secret (all reges did this with other staff and especially D of P’s). At the end DM gave an “amnesty” to cover anyone else who might have been involved in this. This was the end of the “bird dog system”, a system prominently displayed in BLS, the book LRH chose to make the “bible” on how to successfully reg (ref LRH ED 236 INT where he specifies that the why for low GI was the lack of use of the tech in this book).
The next day, DM came to my HGC. He purposely bumped into me, in a “playful” but meaning sort of way, and said “It’s not good to have withholds from me.” In my feeble effort to defend myself I said “Sir, it wasn’t a withhold and was known about by everybody.” His response was “I (emphasized) didn’t know about it!”. That ended any attempt I might make to clear up my name on that score.
Around November 1993 I was told by HCO that a new reg was needed in Dept 6 and that I had been chosen. My previous meager experience as a reg consisted of a failed Flag World Tour stint in 1987 which ended with me doing mest work on the decks just to destimulate from it (while I make no excuses for my failure on this post, there were many reasons for it and all of them could be covered under off-policy and out-tech situations that existed with regard to the tour at the time).
Understandably, because of my last experience as a reg, I wanted no part of this posting. In the end I finally acquiesced and moved to that post. Surprisingly, to me anyway, I did quite well as a reg and at one point during the time from 1993 to 2009 when I routed out, I was even the number 2 reg for the year.
Life as a reg was the best and the worst depending on how the stats were. To his credit, when Harvey Jacques took over as Dir Reg (previously working doing big book deals for Bridge), he did a lot to establish the area. He had very little help but built his own area according to many basic policies (hatting, esto ing, cramming, videoing reges to improve their “reg tech”, etc). He took the department to heights it had never seen before. Many of those years were very pleasant. When the GI was great we were treated like Kings, but when it was down we were treated just as severely the opposite.
Rather than detail all the outpoints one could look at over those years I will fast forward a bit.
I’m not sure what year it actually started, but at one point Int events became a very big deal. They were, however, engramic for the reges. Up until that time I actually enjoyed going to events as a staff member. They were uptone and a time for reviewing all our accomplishments in recent months.
When the change occurred, it could all be summed up under the subject of “quotas”. There was always something to sell, some new release and the quotas given were astronomical to say the least. The usual “no one secures until all quotas are met” became the order of the day. We tried various ways to handle this so it was livable, and one time we even succeeded in making our quota BEFORE the event (always a dream, but realized in actuality almost never). That was a joy, to be able to just watch the event and enjoy the after event festivities knowing all our quotas were met.
The bulk of the time was like “Night of the Living Dead”. Many times, if you were behind quota, you were told to work through the event, selling on the phone to people in other time zones and that you would “see the event later” (which often didn’t happen). In any event, the after event evolutions became more and more gruesome. We would see the people after the event and try to make the quota. When that failed, around midnight or so, we would then get on the phones and call the west coast where it was 3 hours earlier, then Australia, Europe, etc. This went on until we made the quota (which almost never happened as the quotas themselves were unrealistic) or until someone figured out a way to present what we had done as a “highest ever event release” and would get us OK to go home. Usually about 3 am.
Now you would think that would be enough to make a horror movie out of. But there was more. As I mentioned earlier, our only hope to get home at some decent hour was to do “pre-event sales” like starting a day before the event. You had to be very careful as the release was supposed to be a secret until it was announced. Often we would sell the release without telling the public what it was, only that “You will definitely want it!!”. One time an Int exec came to us the afternoon of the event day and said “You are of course not selling any of the release until after the event, right?” with the implication that doing that would be out-ethics. Hell, what other way could we even hope to make anything like the quotas that were set!! So now we were on a “withhold” from Int execs as to what we were doing. It was like some sadistic game where you had your hands tied, tape over your mouth, and you were expected to produce. Like there was absolutely NO reality (like an arcx assessment) about what it took to do these release evolutions.
Well as bad as that was, by the end of the week that the event occurred in, things got back to normal and we could just do our posts again (until the next event).
This all changed when the Basics were released. For me this was the beginning of the end that led to me routing out. The Basics release was the “release event that never ended”. The intensity of this release was about 100 times that of a normal release….and it just kept going. In fact it continued until the day I left (and is probably still going on).
I was a bit of a “black sheep” on this evolution, and this actually got to be well known. The pressure to sell was beyond anything I had seen in my more than 2 decades at the FSO. The quota’s themselves fostered criminality since a staff member HAD to make their quota OR ELSE. So they did anything and everything needed in order to “report” that they had made a sale. Some of the illegal things that occurred during this period were:
Debitting money for books from account without authorization
Repackaging started packages of intensives to make money available for books (a practice that up until this time was considered a gross financial irregularity if a reg ever did this).
“Finding” unused hours in PC folders that could be re recreditted to the account and would be IF they donated a portion toward Basics (this ended up being the scam of all scams which put back on account money that didn’t exist at all and actually cost the org hundreds of thousands of dollars as they were debiting money that wasn’t there for books that then had to be paid to the book account from current income. Shooting themselves in the foot comes to mind as a phrase).
Scams like promising the person that if they buy the many Basics packages being demanded that “someone else will sell them for you and put the money back on your account” (in the instances I got to know about on this, every one of those was an outright lie).
Arranging for one person to loan another person the money for buying several Basics packages just to “bridge” the money until that person got their money and paid them back.
This is a practice forbidden by policy, I believe HCO PL “Handling of Refunds and Bounced Checks” Finance series 3-1R, I think. Any reg caught doing this in the past was crucified literally for doing so. I witnessed this being done openly by non-reg personnel (as all staff were regging for the Basics now, almost full time). The worst one I remember was when an MAA got another new FSO staff member who had money to loan someone they didn’t know, something like $ 17,000 (maybe it was even more) for Basics, to be repaid by a specified time. That time came and went and no money was forthcoming. This was finally resolved when a scathing report was written to the RTC MAA and then she did get her money back.
For me there were many aspects to this evolution that disgusted me. It is hard to say what was the worst. Definitely near the top of the list was the “dog eat dog” attitude that staff then had between each other. It was like a constant war going on. Fighting over public to reg for Basics, doing underhanded things (like the D of P asking to see the person for a “D of P Interview” which was actually a Basics reg cycle).
The staff descended on the public almost like a pack of wolves when they arrived at the Base. Many times they took them off the official arrival line onto service and sequestered them in another location until they got the basics they wanted.
The public I regged on a regular basis must have sensed that I was not part of that scene (probably because I was not hounding them constantly for Basics but just did my post) and they sometimes came to me about their mishandlings and I did what could to set things right for them when they did.
At one point due to all these shenanigans, I estimated I was spending between 30 and 50% of my time simply handling accounts that were screwed up due to unauthorized Basics debits. Not to mention trying to reg the public for their service while they were already upset about their account. (Most of the time the account problems weren’t even known about until they were in my office, doing a normal reg interview for services and I would then go to look at the account. That would often be the first time anyone knew there was a problem. Guess how hard that made my job!)
Now, add to all this the major push on IAS, Ideal Orgs, Superpower, etc and boy was my life as a reg becoming miserable. I really managed to stay away from all this stuff (not to say that I didn’t reg for IAS, which I did as I did have a quota on that as well), so when I tried to reg someone for service (the real and only reason regging existed to begin with) I was met with “Gee, I’d love to buy that package but I just donated $ XX,000 to (IAS, Basics, Superpower, Ideal Orgs)”. I also ran into the fact that public who protested making those donations as they had to pay for their Bridge and couldn’t do both were basically told that buying their Bridge was a first dynamic activity and it was implied they were out-ethics to do so. Huh? The whole reason the org was there was to deliver training and processing, so paying for it was out-ethics? Did somebody lose sight of the purpose of Scientology?? This is nuts!! Then no one should ever do the Bridge based on that.
Very early on in this Basics evolution (around say Sept/Oct 2007), my junior, who really hated the long hours, started doing (unbeknownst to anyone) off-policy things to “make the quota” so we could go home on time. Well, I have to admit, at first I was very happy about this as I could just do my post while she handled the Basics quotas.
I then noticed some outpoints in some of the things she was doing and tried bringing this up to my seniors. They “looked into it” and said they all looked fine. At this point I only noted some minor things that looked a bit off, I still had no idea of the kind of things they later discovered.
It was discovered that she, in collusion with Treasury, had agreed to repackage a public’s intensives and debit Basics from them. When the public later came to Flag and discovered this, she was livid. The account did get fixed, but upon investigation it was found my junior had done this type of thing to the tune of about $80,000. She was, correctly in my opinion, sent to the RPF.
Due to the fact that I now had no junior, I was given an OK to not have a Basics quota as I couldn’t do all of my normal post production plus a Basics quota without even having an assistant (all other reges had an assistant and some had 2 as this was found to increase the income tremendously by this simple little action of having an assistant).
So, I continued to do my post. Other staff started to notice that I “didn’t do Basics” and I began to be ostracized a bit. Many staff on key posts were too busy making their Basics quota to do their own normal post. This included posts like D of P, MAA, Cashier. This made my job harder as trying to re-sign HGC pc’s, which was something a Dept 6 reg does as his primary income source, became very difficult as the D of P was not available because he was in a “Basics interview” (for sometimes hours at a time) or “Basics are flapping” so he couldn’t talk, etc. Pretty crazy that the normal org functions suffered as a result of this evolution.
In addition, as I didn’t have mutual out ruds with other staff and their illegal and criminal handling of Basics (not all staff were this way, but those doing a high volume of Basics sales were quite often involved in financial irregularites), I became a whistle blower of sorts and therefore very unpopular.
The area I became most unpopular in was the MAA office. I uncovered and wrote reports on all the financial irregularities that came across my plate. Realize also that I wasn’t going around looking for this stuff, this was just what I tripped over in doing my normal post. It included the already mentioned debiting of accounts without authorization, repackaging intensive/training packages to use money for books, taking and invoicing checks that were KNOWN to not be covered by funds (mostly written under duress to do so even though they didn’t have the money), threatening off-policy ethics actions if they didn’t donate and some stuff that defied my imagination like having a person from Italy write a “counter check” on a Bank of America account in Euro currency with no account number!!
I even received a veiled threat from a senior MAA when I wrote a KR on one of his juniors. I felt like I was an FBI plant in a mafia operation and I was about to have my cover blown. It was pretty scary actually.
Just for the record, so you don’t hear about it elsewhere, early on during this evolution, in November 2007, I did something really stupid. I blew. Where did I go? Crazy, but I went to Las Vegas. Why? Also crazy. I had some money and thought maybe I could run it up into a more sizeable amount at the tables. Yes it was nuts. I admit that. I was nuts by then in a sense. I don’t even recall the specific incident that set me off to do that. How I left the base without being seen was another trick. In the midst of this insane act, I also felt bad about leaving my post in the middle of a week. Being on GI lines, you “confirm” money once the public agrees to pay even if the logistics take another day or 2. So, since I blew on Saturday morning, I had money confirmed that needed to be gotten in. I also had reg cycles in progress that should be followed up on. So, while on the plane, I wrote all this up in great detail. If I recall it was something like 9 pages of details. When I got to Las Vegas and found a hotel, I asked them to fax it to Flag at midnight their time and asked for the fax to not show the number it had come from.
Well I guess they didn’t or couldn’t do that and that is how they found me. The next morning I got up very early and went out. When I got back mid morning, 2 FSO staff were waiting for me at the hotel. They were doing the “blow drill”. They also made it clear to me that they don’t do this for everybody and implied I should be honored that they were sent to get me. I got that the order came from RTC. After many hours of talking I agreed to return to “route out properly” and was told it would take about a week.
It was 19 months later when I finished my routing form and got final OK to go. During that time I did something else very strange. Usually, when someone is on a “Leaving Staff Routing Form” they do MEST work while getting their sec check, ethics handlings, etc. My senior at the time asked me to stay on post until they could get a replacement for me. At the time I was regging $ 200,000 (on a bad week) to $ 300,000 or even $ 350,000 on a good week, so this was a loss of income no one wanted to have to deal with. I had no problem with this as I actually liked my post and felt I helped my public in many ways other reges couldn’t or didn’t due to my background and experience as a D of P. It was a bit odd though, as only a few staff knew my real situation, so I was on a withhold from other staff as to my current scene.
So, I worked as a reg while doing my leaving sec check, the attempt to do the TRD on me (which failed miserably as they wanted me to run as enemy lines those things I had written in KR’s and when I pointed that out they dropped it) and other actions which went nowhere. My original auditor, I found out much later, was going through his own ethics situation at the time, so even though we had gotten onto the end ruds, we ended up doing a whole other sec check since his auditing was suspect.
There finally was a replacement gotten for me but it took some time before he got up to any decent level of production. As well, I took this time period to do several hat write-ups that were specific to how the lines on that post ran at the Flag AO where I worked. Finally, when I completed all that, I told my MAA that at the end of the following week I would no longer be on post but would do MEST work only. At the end of that week I routed myself to security and began doing MEST work at the Hacienda.
I actually look back on that period as a pleasant experience. The MEST work itself was therapeutic, but I also didn’t have the insanity of the quotas, pressure, yelling and screaming that I had as a daily regimen while on post as a reg. I voluntarily worked harder than any security guard could have ordered me to and I got to be well liked at the Hacienda as I did all the exterior cleaning of the entire property (scrubbing, sweeping, carting debris, etc) as well as many of the interior common spaces (fitness center, crew lounges, canteen, etc). I even amazed the security guards by cleaning areas that had not been cleaned in years and did it so well some of them thought I had repainted these areas!!
Well, I got through all my sec checking and ethics handling and finally got the OK to go and routed out via security.
As a comment, my MAA kept trying to get me to do my conditions or at least start on them. I had a BIG problem with that. First, I didn’t think I needed to do them. I had made 100’s of millions of dollars (not an exaggeration) for the FSO as a reg from Nov 1993 to about April 2009. Why would I need to do conditions? How many other people on the planet could say that? A few. Strange but that was how I felt. The second reason that I told the MAA was, how could I come out of Treason without deciding to stay? Didn’t make sense that I could come out of “Treason” and still be leaving. My thought process sort of locked up on that one.
In any case I finally did route out.
I am rebuilding my life now and it is going very well. I felt PTS to the FSO before I decided to leave and now I feel freer than I have in 25 years. I had earlier been in computers before joining the S.O. in 1985. I tried other things, made a bit of money but nothing really viable. I then decided to take a stab at getting back into that industry. Well, in the past 25 years in computers, EVERYTHING changed. The internet was a fledgling idea back in 1985 and not widely used. Today it IS how computer networking is done. Well, I was self taught to begin with in 1970 when I started, so I figured I could do it again. In March of this year I started studying in earnest. I then got a small job and then another etc. Now I am making a decent living and I am well respected by my clients. In fact I use an LRH datum having to do with the re-sign line in the HGC to measure my quality of delivery. LRH basically says if a PC refuses to re-sign there is out-tech on the case and it is Qual’s job to discover what it is and correct it. There is even a whole line devoted to just this one fact.
Well in what I am doing now I feel this applies. If I don’t get repeat business from my clients then I consider that I have failed to give them a quality product that they are happy with. So far I’m batting a thousand as all of my clients have re-signed for more and/or have originated glowing referrals to friends of theirs which resulted in more work for me. I accomplish this by applying another simple datum from LRH from HCO PL “Conditions of Exchange”. I apply “exchange in abundance” in all my dealings with my clients and that is something they have never seen before and it is received very well.
I am happy to be counted as an Independent Scientologist and consider I am in the ranks of many I respect, including, but not limited to, Marty and Mike.
I also want to thank Marty for his help in bringing me to this point. I had concerns and he took the time to really help me through them so I could openly announce where I stand.
I made a couple of posts earlier under the name “John Gault” as that was a character of author Ayn Rand that symbolized to me the kind of person who does not tolerate suppression of any kind.
I’m glad to be out in the open and possibly some of you know me. Now we can openly be in touch.
Hy Levy
Independent Scientologist
Posted in acknowledgments, ethics, events, FLAG, ias, independents, l. ron hubbard, regging, tech, the future
Tagged “mark rathbun”, David Miscavige, david Miscavige” “Marty Rathbun, scientology
Hi! My name is Lori Hodgson. I joined the Church of Scientology in 1976. I was 13 years old. I resigned from the COS this past August 30, 2010.
My main reasons for resigning from the COS are what I’ve seen and gone through personally over the past 4 years. The recruiting of my children for staff and the Sea Org at their ages of 15 years old and what I experienced through this is unbelievable. My parental rights were completely violated through the COS. I will share a couple of my experiences.
My son at 15 years of age was recruited for the Sea Org while I was in a horrific engram and on heavy pain pills trying to recover from a knee replacement surgery. I had Sea Org recruiters slamming on my front door and pressuring me for 2 weeks since coming home from the hospital. Then because of the stress of the recruiters’ continual harassment and my lack of proper rest I ended up back in the ER for 14 hours and then the hospital for 3 more days with pneumonia and an ovarian cyst rupture which was very serious on top of the recovering for my knee. Prior to me going to the ER, my friend met with the recruiters to not do this cycle while I was still in an engram. The recruiters told my friend that I was PTS, middle class and should not be on pain pills. They did not listen and continued until I got a doctors notice to not have any stress on my lines for 3 months so I could get rest and properly recover.
After about 4 months from my 1st surgery the recruiting started up again behind my back even though I wrote it up to the DSA to not have any recruiting until my son is 18. After the continual pressure I gave in and my son joined the Sea Org. But I had the SO make me some promises that I really thought they would keep. The SO promised that my son would have his schooling, which he never got. They promised I could talk to him whenever I wanted and this was violated as I only got to talk to my son 5-6 times in 6 months even though I called almost daily to reach him. He was told that he could come home to visit which he couldn’t until he routed out and came home.
My 2nd knee replacement surgery was a couple months later as the 1st one was a botched surgery and the implant was 2 sizes too big. During my 2nd day in the hospital after my surgery my daughter said goodbye to me and joined the SO. On day 3 in the hospital I went into shock and almost lost my life and had to have a full blood transfusion. Since I got a 2nd chance I was going to handle my life better. During my recovery I wrote MANY reports on this out ethics situation. I continued to write it up for a year and nothing ever got handled.
I did not feel safe anymore to go in session because I could not agree that all this was for the greatest good. In the past when I didn’t agree, I would get pulled off my auditing and had to do numerous Chaplain cycles and roll backs until I agreed. So YES I resigned, as I could not be a part of this unethical organization anymore.
I found Marty Rathbun’s blog “Moving On Up a Little Higher” and saw his welcome page. I knew right then seeing his picture that I could trust him and wanted him to be my auditor. I thought “Wow Marty has a very clean space and I can feel safe with him”. Then a couple months later my very good friend Carol invited me to go with her to go visit Marty. So I booked my flight and spent 5 days at Marty and Mosey’s place. During my time there I experienced not only being audited by the number 1 auditor on the planet with standard tech, Marty and his wife Mosey are two of the nicest people I’ve ever met. I had INCREDIBLE Wins, the best I’ve had in all my years in Scientology. Marty and Mosey are truly honest, compassionate and remarkable beings and I’m honored to have them as my friends.
Three Camp Fire Girls Dishin'
I came home last Wednesday, December 8th, shining, winning and feeling very keyed out!!!!!
I wasn’t even home for more than 24 hours and got hit with a lot of entheta. On Thursday December 9th someone called my work and asked for our business hours of operation. I answered the query and then asked why was he asking, but he hung up. I was a little concerned with the strange call.
That same day while leaving work, I saw John Allender, (an undercover OSA operative of the COS and the husband of my C/S through Grades and into NED). He showed up in my parking lot and came toward me as I headed to my car. He said, “You did some squirreling over the weekend.” This indicates he knew my whereabouts and has either been following me or stalking me for a few days, since I returned from town only the day before and not even my own son knew where I’d been. Then he got closer, within 3 to 5 feet of me, and blocked my access to my car and confronted me saying, “Do you enjoy beatings?” I looked at him and said “NO” and was thinking to myself is he threatening to beat me up or giving me a warning? The comm was crazy! Then he said, “How did he know how to audit you with no PC folders?” He said other things but I cut his comm. I said “I’m not having this conversation with you!” and I turned to go back into my office where I felt safe. My heart was racing and I could not run due to my knee replacement surgery.
The San Jose Police Department are aware of the incident on Thursday December 9th and I will continue to expose and report any harassment I encounter from the COS because I am not going to be threatened by anyone. The CoS is not above the LAW!!!! I live in America where we have Freedom and I’m not going to be suppressed anymore. My integrity is in and I’m not going to violate it anymore! I am a free and happy being. When one knows they are doing the right thing, nothing can stop them because the truth always wins.
Lori - back in the saddle again
Lori can be reached at: thetahondagirl@gmail.com
Translation of the latest from Gary Baldi at L’Indipendologo http://indipendologo.wordpress.com/2010/12/12/francesco-minelli-e-luana-barbaglio-lasciano-la-chiesa/
The legend tells that in the night of December Twelve around Bergamo and Brescia, along with a donkey full of presents, a saint woman by the name of Santa Lucia, will bring gifts to all kids that anxiously await her arrival. At times you could hear a bell ring, the donkey has one by his neck, which calls all kids to hiding, for no one can look at Santa Lucia, otherwise she’ll throw some magical dust that will blind all kids…Well, Luana and Francesco have been really naughty, for as soon as the local OSA I/C from Brescia told them to be aware of the nasty things Indys were writing on blogs, they started gathering all of the data for themselves.
These are very special people, because in NO time they have absorbed all that was needed to be absorbed, and have decided at once to leave the Church! This is some real speed of particle flow…they really must have some Power! We’ve been observing “second generation” Scientologists which hold within themselves amazing attributes. A great welcome to Luana and Francesco!
Luana Barbaglio and Francesco Minelli
Dear friends, after nearly 36 years in Scientology as a Scientologist, and in order to Keep Scientology Working, I, Francesco Minelli, together with my wife Luana Barbaglio, have decided to withdraw our allegiance to the current Church of Scientology.
I was born in Scientology and grew up amongst Italian pioneers. I’ve lived through the closings of all Orgs in Italy, LRH’s death, the release of OTVIII, and I’ve lived the humongous quantity of Theta and OTs that Brescia, the Sea Org, and Flag once had…and I’ve slowly watched this Elan Vital vanish from all of my universes.
Where have all the OTs from Brescia gone? Left the scene, disaffected, become VIPs and only on CC lines, Flag and the Ship…Some hit by strokes, and some even dead. This was mysteriously hidden to all of us and to all my questions, there was just a bunch of Q&A for a no-answer.
This was not making sense, I was reading one thing and seeing another.
I have to thank the Office of Special Affairs of Brescia ORG, especially Lorenzo Cordini, for telling me not to think about the pink elephant. Because of my inherent character (being born a rebel), from that moment on I researched the history of Scientology. I’ve gained data, seen the actual conditions of 5 different Idle Orgs in Europe, and compared policies of LRH with the current scene.
It was a long research and needed a lot of confront. I was alone at first, and then with the risk of losing my family, I showed all evidences to my wife Luana who came to her own conclusions.
Our friends are free Scientologists, that can completely apply while showing their face, the Creed of the Church of Scientology. They don’t play with their own integrity by being the subjects of the threats that someone will take their Bridge away just because they LOOKED on the Internet. What we are living inside the current Church is not freedom, it is the complete opposite!
Truth gets completely inverted in the name of convenience.
You just need to search on YouTube for “LRH Interview” only to find that on the cover of that DVD “An Introduction to Scientology”…when they say “the only LRH filmed interview” that there is a LIE! And this is NOTHING compared to what me and Luana had to confront.
Luis Garcia’s letter was actually the perfect example of what we wanted to write, it was perfect in every part, and written from a real dedicated Scientologist. It contained points that are evident, crystal clear and undisputable.
It is not our intention right here to handle you on coming out or not from the Church. It is only up to you to freely inform yourself on the things that prompted us to leave the current Church of Scientology, or you can restrain yourself, or even worst, have someone else restraining you.
This is the Price of Freedom.
And now, dear administration of the Church of Scientology, you can go ahead and post your little yellow papers on Public Notice Boards…but please, DO IT!!! Respect the policy…
Before we leave you, we’d like to inform the current administration of the Church of Scientology, that as far as we are concern, we’ll be waiting for one of your representatives which will have to provide us with:
1. All of our money given to the Brescia Idle Org (including interests)
2. All of our money given to the IAS
3. All of the money still on our accounts at Brescia Org, AOSHEU, FSO, FSSO. Including all materials, with their equivalent value in money that have been purchased at Flag but never delivered to us nor our selectees.
4. All of our PC, Pre-OT and Ethics Folders, wherever they might be, sealed and intact.
5. Our little Yellow Papers.
In the event that this will not take place in the shortest time possible, we will have to resort to some other way, and we Italians have a history on knowing plenty, which means (using Scientology Terminology), Raising the Gradient.
My wife and myself will always continue supporting LRH and his spiritual legacy. We are leaving the Church since its current management uses Reverse Scientology on people, and we do not want to be an accomplice to any of this, having become aware of its continual and repeated crimes against humanity.
This is not freedom.
Look, don’t listen.
Moving On Up a Little Higher 