Highlight: The Scientology Mind Prison

Apologia Studios

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00:03

With regards to your book a billion years what you're kind of talking about is almost the mind prison

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Right to use one of your terms in the book that all of these Colts essentially create for their followers I think you paint a really good illustration with regards also to your vulnerability

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You you paint this illustrations that your children Taryn and Benjamin can kind of understand what this mind prison is for our listeners

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Can you describe that illustration that you make because I think it's a very Tangible way for our audience to understand what it's like being within that mind prison

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Right. I describe it Andrew. I try to come up with this analogy that I thought okay let's take this outside the world of Scientology and analogize it to something and I I Describe being born into a house

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With a wall around it Told a high wall and that the people inside the house believe that everything outside of that wall is

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Evil and is intent on on their destruction and Killing them and that this house inside the wall is the most magnificent perfect environment that doesn't exist anywhere else on earth and that it's it's very difficult when you have been raised and grow up in a house like that to believe that The best course of action for you would be to jump over that wall or try and scale that wall

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Or break through that wall in some way because the the downsides that you have been

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Forewarned about on the other side are horrendous They are it is death and destruction pain and agony for all eternity should you breach that wall and Not ever having seen

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Outside the wall it is very easy for someone to believe that that is

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What is out there and I try and describe to my my son and daughter

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Look, I did jump over the wall. The other side ain't bad.

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In fact in many respects It's much better and I say at the beginning of the book that this book is an effort like since I got over The wall,

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I've been trying to shout back into the house saying it's not so bad in there

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It's not it's just not bad out here. What you've been told isn't true. It's not bad. It's it's all okay you can you can walk out there you can walk back to if you want but you can come out and that I've been throwing rocks over the wall with notes on them and dropping things from planes and This book is another effort to get the message inside the wall

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And you talked about how even when you left the Sea Org you were still essentially a

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Scientologist in mind Did you find that it was kind of like? Your identity had been replaced at such a young age

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To think not like you are L Ron Hubbard because I would assume that L Ron Hubbard doesn't think like anybody within the

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Sea Org He wants them to think a specific way But that you were pretty much like a product of someone who thought well

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What would Ron L Hubbard do in all of these situations like your identity was now the technologies?

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So like over in your life, you had to like reverse engineer somehow these technologies that you had been

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Trained in to try to find out who Mike was again That's something that is a as an astonishingly accurate

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Accurate glimpse that I never really have thought about that way, but I think that that's very true

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I mean I say a Number of times in the book, you know for the first time when

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I escaped the Sea Org for the first time in my life. I didn't have a a

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Set of rules and Restrictions and regulations and this is what you must do now

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And this is how you must think about this and this is how you must think about that and that was both incredibly freeing and Also, very scary because It took a long time and I'm not sure that I've even reached that point yet to figure out

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What is it? That is My perspective and what is it? that is this perspective on things that I was taught to have as a perspective on things like For a long time

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I would stop and and me and my wife who's also a former Sea Org member Would stop and go wait a minute

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Did we just say something that is based on? What we were told we were supposed to believe or we were supposed to think about that way or is that what we really think and we we would do that routinely and I Guess as time has gone by that's become less and less as I have figured out and understood what it was that was, you know hammered into me to look at this way or that way and but it it is

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This is not a process that happens with the snap of your fingers the snap of your fingers is

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Jumping over the wall That is a snap of the fingers. There was a moment that happens with everybody where they finally go

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I've had enough. I'm done. Nothing could be worse than this. I'm over the wall, but when you get over the wall figuring out where you're going and how to get there and not turn around and reverse yourself back in the wall again by Accident or by habit or by routine it is not so easy

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It is a real process to get through that and come to terms with Yourself and come to terms with your interaction with the rest of the world without the crutch of What is wrong say, you know,

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I believe that a lot of people stay in the Scientology because it's easy Like it's very difficult in some respects and in other respects.

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It's really easy. You are told Exactly what you should think exactly how you should react to everything exactly what's

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Expected what's right? What's wrong? It's all laid out and you don't have to make any decisions really other than I'm gonna be a good

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Scientologist and if I'm a good Scientologist, I know exactly what it is that I'm supposed to do next

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Yeah, I it reminds me of in Proverbs 12 10. It says the mercy of the wicked is cruel meaning that there's

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Cruel things that are done in the name of mercy when it's not merciful In and of itself like the fair game tactics and it even seems like within Scientology that the fair game tactics aren't only used on people who are

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SPs or wogs in a sense the outside world But it's also used to control people in Scientology like it was used to control you like you were sent to this place called

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The hole or to walk around a tree or to jump in a pool with all your clothes on. Can you can you explain?

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Some of those things that you went through personally that I would call that spiritual abuse and spiritual trauma

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Yes, and I agree with you. That is exactly what it is. It is mind fuckery

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It is that is the mind prison In sort of encapsulated the hole is

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Something that was depicted in going clear or at least one small part of it

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I give a much broader lengthier Rendition of what the whole was because I was one of the founding members

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The whole was a prison that was created on the property of the

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International Headquarters of Scientology in Riverside County Where people were incarcerated myself included and ended up Engaging in all sorts of physical

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Abuses in order to squeeze confessions out of people That supposedly would prove that they were now worthy of serving

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David Miscavige and these these sort of sadistic

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Activities and you know throwing people in slimy lakes with their clothes on and you know

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Running around the pole in 110 degree heat that sort of stuff is the physical

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Manifestations of the mental torture that was occurring And the mental torture is far more difficult to to grasp

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Viscerally, it is far more difficult to describe But it is far more effective

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Larry Wright called his book going clear Scientology in the prison of belief because that is what?

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Scientology is it is a prison of belief. So how does the the Scientology organization get around putting people in the hole like for two months three months

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There's like testimonies of like you wrote where people are clawing at each other hitting each other hurting each other This is something that you would think would be illegal in every sense.

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What's the way to get around it? Do they sign some does the person the Sea Org sign something to where they can't chart put charges against the

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Scientology organization? How does that work? It's it's hard for me to fathom that well, I Believe it or not

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Andrew if the FBI busted down the gates and went and Took every one of those people and said hi

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I'm an FBI agent. I want you to tell me what's going on here. Are you being held against your will?

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Are you being are you being abused every single one of them would say no They were if this is what you see in so many of these documentaries you see the the

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Warren Jeff stuff and what those women and they're like and this sort of Someone comes in and they're howling about you know

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The Child Protective Services is here and they're stealing my children and they're doing this that that In the minds of those people if an

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FBI agent Walked in with a badge and said I can take you away from here

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They would think that they were being taken over the wall into hell so It's the it's the mind prison.

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That is the problem. I mean honestly Andrew in 2009 I was working with FBI agents and they asked me that very question if we went and Britain and Set a team there to go and get these people.

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What would happen? I Described that to them. He said they said well What if you came along and Mark Headley and some of these other people came along with us?

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They said they'd look at us just the same like we're cockroaches. We're like we're horrible just we're now

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Suppressive persons that are there to destroy Scientology and anybody that that would break ranks

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To join and walk out the door at that point would Would be making a decision that they believed would