PJCNET

I’m no longer involved with the Church of Scientology, but I did study 2 courses and became temporarily involved with the religion after getting recruited in the street in Poole in Dorset, UK while on holiday. When I returned home, I continued my involvement in Scientology and attended the Birmingham branch on regular occasions. Here are my experiences of religion, both good and bad.

Around 10 years ago when I was recruited, I was told about an amazing life changing book named Dianetics which is the first Scientology related book written by L. Ron Hubbard (LRH), a former sci-fi writer who founded the religion back in 1954. After a lot of chatting I was asked to watch a video, at first I refused, but the person used very clever techniques to persuade me and was very pleasant and polite in every way throughout. I watched what in my opinion is a brainwashing video saying how amazing Dianetics and Scientology was and how L. Ron Hubbard had changed the world since the 1950’s. I then did a totally free personality test which consisted of hundreds of multiple choice questions. I was then invited into a room with a lady for my results (this same lady was later actually secretly filmed on a TV programme exposing Scientology). She identified that I was in dire need of help, explaining what I needed improving in my life. She said that the good news is I can do something about it and they are there to help. It was very realistic and as I was down on my luck in life at the time so I reluctantly listened. I then got told I should really go on a course that would change my life for the better for just 2 evenings before I went home after my holiday. I told her no, but then she really laid on the persuasion very hard, telling me that it would really be the difference in my life and that I’d be a different person after I’d done this one course. Only this course could apparently offer me this change and I was told how much I’d lose if I didn’t do this course. I eventually agreed.

The 1st course was cheap at less than £40 including a book at the time and I attended the course in Poole while on holiday in nearby Bournemouth. The way I was treated by the staff was brilliant, they were all lovely in every way. I felt wanted and happy to have so much good attention as I was feeling very depressed at the time. I thought the 1st course was initially brilliant and I actually use some of the techniques today, but I much later discovered that many of the techniques are basic psychology. Scientology also introduced a technique called “word clearing” for reading absolutely anything. Basically if you don’t understand a word while reading, you can lose interest or yarn when not actually physically tired when reading, if you trace back the sentence(s), you will eventually find a word that you don’t actually understand fully. If you lookup and understand the definition of that word, you will then be able to read it the text properly and understand it fully without getting bored. Surprisingly “word clearing” actually worked for me and in my opinion makes sure people really do understand everything that they read. The only thing I disagreed with looking back on the 1st course is that in my opinion, part of the course started trying to condition me to react to criticism of Scientology, E.g. from worried family and friends. I think the 1st course is good however as it is part of the recruitment and must be convincing and useful. The the next course however attempted to get me much deeper into Scientology.

After finishing the 1st course, I thanked them and wanted to leave without doing any more courses, but I was taken back into the office with the lady who first persuaded me onto the 1st course. She was very nice, but tried to persuade me to do another course that would change my life even more. This course was around £100 with various books included. I was very reluctant, but after lots of persuasion, I agreed. I was then surprised to be walked to the cash point, probably in case I changed my mind. This was initially worrying, but I was already half recruited into Scientology at the time and was excited by my new found interest and what I believed were new friends.

I attended the 2nd course at Birmingham, but I disagreed with many parts of it after attending regularly for a few weeks, these disagreements became more and more serious as time went on and were later accompanied with more disagreements regarding various other aspects of the organisation which eventually lead to finally walking out after about 2 months.

During the 2nd course I was taken into a room for an attempt at persuading me to part with a lot more money. They tried to get me to write down all my finances and tried to explain ways I could afford the courses that I really needed, many costing £1000+. I spoke to various other people who had done these courses, some satisfied, others not. When I disagreed with various things including the money aspect of Scientology, I kept getting taken into rooms to watch videos and for serious talks from staff members.

In my opinion, one brainwashing attempt was to offer me what they called an amnesty and that one should write down and give to the Scientology staff ALL your secrets, including the deepest secrets that one never tells anyone. They said that this would never be used against you and that you’d be forgiven. They compared similar techniques of forgiveness with the Catholic religion, but stated that they go a stage further. If I had agreed, the church would have had records of these secrets and in my opinion they use this to have power over people.

I went on a trip to Saint Hill Manor, a large castle which is the UK Headquarters of the church and in fact L. Ron Hubbard’s UK home before his death in 1986. I sat through what in my opinion was a totally brainwashing event and presentation which was in front of thousands of people, basically promoting how amazing Scientology was doing with various statistics shown on a big screen, all with lots of claps and cheers. I wasn’t one of the most privileged people of the church, so I had to watch the event live on a large projector screen inside a massive marque in the castle grounds. This showed me just how much money the organisation had, owning such a large castle, I also found out about a massive luxury cruise liner which is also owned by the church, called “The Freewinds” which initially gave me serious doubts about the religion and about how money was important to them.

Once various distinguished Scientology visitors from America visited Birmingham to give a presentation. They tried to persuade us to part with £1000 to become a lifetime member of The International Association of Scientologists which was only available for such a low price that day (saying the offer is only available now and not later is a well known technique of hard selling). Anyone who then parted with the large amount of money (and some people did write a cheque for £1000 there and then) were then congratulated and told “good for you”, trying to get people to join too. In return they got a certificate, a hand shake and told they’d get 10% of any future courses (note you would have to spend over £10,000 to actually start saving money). The presentation was so convincing that I was actually tempted at the time, but I’m glad I didn’t join now.

I spoke to people who had been taken for every penny they had and had been given credit by the church. Some had even been given the solution of living with other scientologists to be able to afford the expensive course fees. Most of these people in my opinion were very vulnerable and totally trusted the organisation. These people usually did exactly what the organisation wanted without question, even if it meant spending thousands of pounds. I saw the price lists of some of the later courses and complained that some courses cost well over £30K and this was about 10 years ago. The staff responded explaining that you get a massive amount for your money, I wasn’t very convinced and started asking questions like whether they’d be helping me if I had no money at all. They always seemed to have responses and started explaining how people with no money could work for the organisation as a Trainee Auditor. Auditing is a complex type of spiritual counselling inside the church which is beyond the scope of this document. I spoke to staff members who at the time were paid a tiny amount of money, just enough to live. They all worked extremely long hours, from morning to late night every single day and were happy that they were receiving training for free. I don’t know how they work around this low pay these days as since then there has been reintroduced a national UK minimum wage.

The church tried to get me to use a what looked to be like a primitive lie detector that seemed to measure conductivity through my body, they call these E-Meters and these can cost around £1000, they said it detected the “reactive mind” which according to Scientology is the root of all evil in society. I have a good knowledge of electronics, so I saw through and questioned the primitive device.

I started asking about how L. Ron Hubbard died, but no-one would tell me and I thought this strange as he didn’t die old like one would expect if he was so much into Scientology’s techniques. I continued on this line of questioning, but despite this no-one would answer, changing the subject every time. How he died indeed seems to be a secret mystery, but some people believe he died while taking a psychiatric drug when Scientology is extremely against Psychiatry and mind altering drugs, they believe that all illnesses are psychosomatic (created by the mind).

I questioned “A Clear” which is supposed to be a person who doesn’t use “the reactive mind” in any way. “A Clear” is what everyone works up towards on a advancement ladder named “The Bridge to Total Freedom” while studying Scientology and it’s various courses. “A Clear” is never supposed to get angry about anything, so I went on about how L. Ron Hubbard to a supposed “Clear” yet he died early and continued telling her how much I disagreed with Scientology. I went on and on as a test. This apparent “Clear” got angry and nearly lost her temper on me, raising her voice. I then asked another member of staff how “A Clear” could become angered at just words and despite being told she was “A Clear” many times before, I then got told that she was almost “A Clear”, not fully, which I certainly didn’t believe. They then tried to get me to read a Scientology text about “doubt” and what to do using what looked like a flow diagram. Obviously if the doubt was Scientology itself, the flow chart would end in telling me that I should stay and this was expected.

I was once by the entrance to the Scientology building in Birmingham and a young homeless girl asked for directions to a nearby homeless centre. I started trying to explain and a member of staff came and told her to leave and was very nasty and unhelpful to her. I was shocked and I demanded to know why they didn’t help her and said that it must have been because she had no money.

I eventually had enough and was about to walk out, but they put me in a room to watch another video which was telling me again how amazing Scientology was as usual. After a few minutes, I went to get up and found that someone was at the door who was about to stop me leaving. I nastily looked at the women in a way of saying, “you try and stop me and see what happens” and I walked out. They occasionally kept sending me hand written letters afterwards for many years.

More Opinions, Debates and Further Information

Getting up and walking out of Scientology took to a lot of strength at the time and I was then very upset and messed up. In my opinion, it showed how much I had already been brainwashed.

I don’t think the staff at the lower levels of Scientology are bad people, I believe they think they’re doing the right thing and are helping people. I suspect however that there is corruption at high levels and always has been since L. Ron Hubbard.

I learnt that Scientology have a lot of expensive lawyers who have sued people who go against and damage the religion. I watched lots of videos about how they won various law suits against their enemies of the religion.

L. Ron Hubbard used to be a science fiction writer, yet Scientology has now been exposed as “A UFO Religion“. For more details, please click on the “A UFO Religion” link and scroll down to Scientology. Also please look up information about Xenu as according to L. Ron Hubbard, Xunu is the dictator of the “Galactic Confederacy” who, 75 million years ago, brought billions of his people to Earth in DC-8-like spacecraft. Was L. Ron Hubbard simply inspired by what he found out to be true about aliens or are these Scientology texts simply another part of one of his Sci-Fi books? In my opinion I believe it to be total fiction, especially since I have discovered Spiritualism which has shown me true evidence that doesn’t fit in with the founder’s writings. This information about aliens is only given to scientologists who are very high up in the religion and in my opinion very highly brainwashed, thus they’d actually believe this. If I knew about this in the early stages of studying the religion, I would have walked out straight away.

The Church of Scientology is extremely wide spread in the USA and various well known celebrities are practising the religion. In the USA the organisation has become a registered charity. The church continue to expand across the UK, but despite numerous attempts haven’t been accepted charity status here. They offer solutions to virtually every social problem from individuals to worldwide diplomatic relations. They are strongly against modern psychiatry and offer what they think are much better alternatives without using any drugs, They even tackle controversial issues like drug abuse and much more. The religion continues to be very controversial, yet it has grown rapidly since it was first founded.

Links for More Information

FOR: If you would like to visit the official UK site of The Church of Scientology, please click here.

UNBIASED: For a totally unbiased run down of The Church of Scientology’s beliefs and practices, please click here.

AGAINST: There is an organisation which is totally against The Church of Scientology named, “Operation Clambake”, please click here for more information.

If you are still interested in the works of L. Ron Hubbard, then I personally recommend you checkout The International Freezone Association (IFA) as they believe they practice the original philosophy of L Ron Hubbard before they were altered by The Church Of Scientology.

Legal Disclaimer

This document is without prejudice. The above text is my own personal opinion as to how I saw Scientology at the time along with my personal experiences as I remember them, other people may have different opinions or have had different experiences of the religion. My text cannot be taken as definite fact and I do NOT claim to be an expert in the field of Scientology and the religion. Although we try to make the information as accurate as possible, PJCNET will not be held responsible for any mistakes made or any other inaccuracies. If the Church Of Scientology would like to reply to my opinion, please do so and as long as it’s written in a professional and reasonable manner it will most certainly be approved and added below. I am neither against or for Scientology and would welcome any reasonable debate.

(Please use coupon code: PJCNET for an exclusive discount)

Please click to share this article!