The following is an excerpt from the book Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior. I am interested to know whether anyone else ever had an encounter with a nut job bestowed with Scientology high priest status. If so, did you ever wonder how that could be given the representations made in policy letter Keeping Scientology Working? You think John and his like were not handled ruthlessly enough in their training? You think ruthlessness was given such a positive emphasis that thugs like him were encouraged?
From Chapter Nine:
I was also to be on training courses five hour a day, in the staff course room. There I met the head of staff training and auditing, John Colleto.
Colleto was a Class VIII auditor – a very advanced level of auditor training and, presumably, skill. Attaining this level included the right for Colleto to use the title “Dean of Technology.” The fact that Pubs staff were under the care of such a highly trained Scientologist was a big part of Billy Kahn’s recruitment pitch. Despite the hype and his lofty title, John turned out to be a dull, serious, bored, overweight, bespectacled man in his late twenties. For someone who was supposed to have attained the higher levels of training and spirituality in Scientology, he struck me as a pretty troubled individual.
My assigned study period meant I’d be alone for five hours each day under Colleto’s supervision. He showed me no warmth – in fact, what I often got instead was disdain.
The texts for my courses consisted of organizational policy letters and directives, written over a span of many years. They were full of Scientology organizational jargon, which made study a grinding task. Adding to the difficulty was the fact that the jargon itself had evolved over time, so that writings from different periods had different terminology. Sometimes my only hope for making sense of what I read was to ask Colleto for clarifications. But it seemed whenever I asked his help, he would take the opportunity to leave me feeling stupid. I began to withdraw into myself and just try to grind it out alone.
During study time one day, I began dozing off. “Wake up,” snapped Colleto.
“I must have gone by a word I didn’t get,” I said, referring to the principle from Hubbard’s study technology that when someone passes a misunderstood word, they can become foggy or dope off.
Instead of helping me find what word I didn’t understand (as course supervisors are trained to do), Colleto pulled out the Scientology Technical Dictionary. Opening the book, he showed me the definition of “implant” – a technical term from auditing technology, meaning “a painful and forceful means of overwhelming a being with artificial purposes or false concepts, in a malicious attempt to control and suppress him.”
I thought I understood Colleto’s point. In Scientology auditing, one recalls moments of pain and unconsciousness from his past, reviewing them until they are discharged of the mental energy they contain, and their destructive mental and spiritual effects. By reviewing and relieving enough such incidents, the state of Clear can eventually be reached.
“Yeah, I get it. I suppose these implants can come up during one’s auditing.”
“They do come up. Everybody has them. How many do you think you might have?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t had any auditing. So I suppose I’ll find out I have a few.”
Leaning across the table and fixing me with an icy stare, just inches from my face, Colleto said, “Try a few million.” At that he got up, went back to his desk, picked up some papers and started reading