The Real "Eyes Wide Shut" Cult that Destroys Your Life | The Headleys

Hey guys, if you're not following me on Spotify, please hit that follow button and leave a five-star review. They're both a huge, huge help. Thank you. Hubbard wrote a lot about the U.S. government and how they're trying to destroy Scientology in the early years. And so there's a lot of folklore built into Scientology that the government is bad, politicians are backstabbers. They're right about that. Psychiatry, psychology, the American Medical Association, these are sort of like Scientology is threatening their business model. And that's why they're talking about Scientology being a bad thing is because Scientology is threatening their bottom line. And so you sort of – that is sort of the view that you have when you're in it. And then when we came out and then we – And I was posting on the internet in 2000, late 2005, early 2006. I started posting on the internet. When you escape from Scientology, it's called a blow. And someone who has escaped, they have blown Scientology. And most of the time, they try to recover those people and bring them back into Scientology, and they call that being recovered. And so when I started posting on the internet, I wanted to make sure. That they knew that I was blown for good. I'm never coming back. And so I had probably over a million views and hits on the things that I had written on different blogs and stuff about Scientology. And in that period, I guess that the FBI started seeing some of this stuff and putting the picture together. And so when we were contacted by these two agents, it was sort of like – The what? You want us to become confidential informants against Scientology? And there was a part where when we were – this is all old news now. But we were being shown drone footage of the property, of the Scientology headquarters by the FBI and being asked, what's going on here? Why are these people migrating over to this place? And even – We were actually going to a company. So we could say, this is where this is. This is where that is. Like basically provide them – in my book, there is a map of the property and a key that shows what every single – this is where David Miscavige lives. This is L. Ron Hubbard's mansion. This is where Religious Technology Center offices are. And it lays out the whole property. Well, they were like, when we go there, we want you to show us where David – all the – every meeting that David Miscavige holds. No matter with who or where, it's recorded and transcribed. Every single meeting. Hey guys, three quick things. Number one, if you haven't subscribed, please subscribe. It's a huge, huge help. Number two, if you'd like to join my Patreon for early uncensored releases of the full episodes, you can join via the link in my description or in the pinned comment below. And number three, if you'd like to join my clipping community for a chance to make content from the show and make money, you can join via the Discord link in my description below. And they – They filter out all the beatings and the cursing and all that stuff. But everything else is pretty much in these meetings. And obviously in the original recording, that's in – that's on the original recordings. But – so they were like, we want you to take us to these – show us where these things are. Show us where they have a cache of files or wherever digital things were. And in my case, because I was a technology guy when I was in Scientology and the Sea Org, I ran. And connected that entire 500-acre property with fiber to all the different buildings and set up all their networks and everything like that. So when I left and then started posting these things on the internet about what was going on at the property even after I left because people were escaping and then giving me four little facts about this happened. And then another person would escape and we'd help them get a job or whatever and they'd be like, oh, this happened and that happened. So I was constantly updating. So I was constantly updating with new things. Yeah. And between our shared knowledge of things, we were able to put together pieces of a lot of more current information of what was happening. But then I heard from somebody who escaped. One of, if not the most common DMs I get on Instagram are many of you asking me what my favorite books are. Well, today's your lucky day because if you use the link in my description below to join my newsletter, I'm going to give you my top 10 book recommendations right now. Also, if you'd like to join my clipping community for a chance to make money producing content from the show, you can do so. Via the Discord link in my description below. And finally, you can join my Patreon for early uncensored releases of the full episodes via the Patreon link in my description below. As always, please take one second to hit that subscribe button if you haven't already. I really appreciate that. Also, the like button is a big help. And you can join my newsletter via the link in the description below. That they thought that I had installed different devices on their networks so that I could still access things that were happening. Speaks to their level of paranoia. I guess so. Wow. Yeah. So they even. Did you? Well, I'll tell you this. They were going through my garbage. They're not watching this. When we lived in Burbank. And they found a receipt for a wireless video transmitter device that could be plugged into like a VGA port. And then that would be sent via radio waves. And you could have a receiver and you could see what was ever on that screen. They found that receipt in our garbage. our garbage and they put the pieces together that maybe i had somehow installed this at the property And they put the pieces together. somehow and that's how the funny thing was is my business i i have a tech av tech business right now and it was for a display for a company um that fabricated custom furnitures and scenic and did like universal city uh universal rides and stuff like that and we had this interactive where you would move this target around this giant board and if you went restaurants it would it would on this on this display it would show all the restaurants they built it was a catalina island kiosk yeah but but it that's what that device was for but they had put this whole thing together 5d chess yeah that i was doing all this other stuff and i was like no bitches i'm just getting info from people that recently escaped i don't i'm not there modern i'm not camped outside your property this is a really good cover story yeah i almost believe it is it's pretty good um but yes but we it was weird when that happened oh that's claire right there yep that's that picture is oh that's you in uniform yeah she is that's me in the cadet organization yeah in the big one in the front right and then that's you really little right there no no where on the right is that you no no that's valeska oh the one that's doing the salute no no no the salute over there that's not you no but this is you in this in the kids picture yeah yeah yeah from tony that's it that's in uk that's in at uh that place where she said that is me at six years old in the cadet organization and you're smiling too right that you know the sometimes they feel like stupid questions to ask but like i can't really put myself there without asking them do you know do you understand at that age because you're in the process of being very actively brainwashed at six do you understand emotion like a picture's being taken you're supposed to smile and you're supposed to feel something like happy because you're being taken a picture feelings don't matter in scientology it's just smile but do you know what that is you know what i mean that's a yeah i mean fake question so funny story about this picture in our deposition in our lawsuit mark marmoro the the guy that we looked at was doing the deposition he showed me this picture and said did you have a happy childhood i said no absolutely not what the emotions that i remember at this age were constantly battling to try and spend any amount of time with my mom if i saw her an hour once a week or two hours that was a good week so you know it you're right i was already already in so in deep that even at this age i knew that if i didn't comply and do what was asked of me i'd lose my mom yeah now when jenna miscavige was on my show she described these schools of which you were both apart we'll get to that but you know she described the teachers in them as like the way i was picturing it was again to use the truman show example where they talk to you in that fake voice where they're like you're gonna do this right now because that's what we do and she was like no that's literally what it was yeah would you say the same 100 and and in fact most of the people that are in charge of the children at this time they don't allow there is no they don't do that anymore they got there was way too much scrutiny on the children and how they were being educated and unsupervised for the most part. All of these kids were on their own and their boss-- if you're six, your boss was a 12-year-old or a 10-year-old. It's the cadet estate's organization. The kids make up the organization. They have posts and positions. and they have to report their statistics. And it's basically like a baby Sea Org for kids. Yeah. And like this, around this age is when I was made to sign my first billion-year contract. At six? Mm-hmm. It was a requirement. To be in the Cadet Org, you have to be like, I'm going to eventually become a Sea Org member. You're being groomed and trained for service in the Sea Organization. And because it's under a religious designation, they say you actually agree to it and like it, which is fucking crazy. Yeah. Yeah. And the other crazy thing, and this is coming up more recently, is that not only did they have the Cadet Org back then, but they also had a lot of Scientology schools. So there was a thing where Scientologists, wealthy or just regular Scientologists, are having to send their kids to non-Scientology schools, which Hubbard frowns upon. So. They started making these Scientology schools. And in many cases, those kids don't even end up graduating from the Scientology school because they get scooped up for the Sea Org when they're 15 or 16. And even in that picture, that one random picture in England, there's three or four people in that picture that ended up working at the international headquarters with us. Mm-hmm. So the kids, if they're gotten in early enough, they become. They become senior Sea Org members as they grow up because they don't know anything else besides the Sea Organization. Wow. So they're. And they also, they didn't get to do drugs. They didn't get to get into any kind of criminal activities or nonsense because they've been living in the bubble the whole time. Right. And they're the best and most dedicated Sea Org members because that's all they know. And you had that picture of the operation, that the government did up on there, Project Normandy. Yeah. Or where was the one where they went to jail? I think that's the other one. Okay. Yeah. I think that one. Yeah. There you go. So that's the list of the people in the guardian's office. This is when the wife went to jail. That's when his wife went to jail. Yeah, Mary Sue Hubbard. Yeah. But the only reason I bring that up is because there's a name on there, Henning Heldt. Yeah, right there. He was the dean of the Scientology school I went to. He was the dean right after he got out of prison. And he was in the guardian's office, got busted, went to jail, got out, and was the head of the Scientology school. It's like the mob. You leave college and they're like, we set you up with a new fucking business. And many of the people, like the Willardsons, there's another guy on there, Gregory Willardson, his mother worked at the school. He was a guardian's operative. Now, why were they nice to people like Henning and Willardson and all that, but he wrote off his own wife? Because. Disappeared her. Because they knew stuff and they could leak stuff. Hubbard's wife was banished but taken care of. So she had a full-time. She lived in, I think, I want to say Las Feliz. Las Feliz, yeah. She was put in a house. She had Sea Org members. Basically were her caretakers. Yeah, I can't remember the guy's name. Neville Potter. Neville Potter. Neville Potter was her full-time caretaker, but she was not allowed to interact with anyone in Scientology, from that point forward. Except for her character. And she was removed from all the pictures. She was literally written out of Scientology's history. You've probably heard us talk before about OneSkin for their best-selling skincare, but now they're bringing that same breakthrough longevity science to their scalp serum, OS-1 Hair. Now, for all the guys out there listening, you know, as we get older, we start wondering when that hairline's going to start going. Whether it's stress, hormonal shifts, or just getting older, hair changes can happen to everyone. And that's exactly what we're talking about. And that's exactly why OneSkin built OS-1 Hair. It's a daily serum powered by their proprietary OS-1 Peptide that actually works on your scalp, where hair health begins, to nourish it from the root, so your hair looks and feels better over time. They've done clinical studies on this serum to validate the science, and the results are incredible. Six months in, people saw a 43% increase in their hair thickness, and a 40% increase in hair density, in addition to seeing less visible hair shedding. And just three months in, 75% of customers saw new visible hair growth. Most of the other hair treatments, most of the other hair treatments, most of the other hair treatments, most of the other hair treatment options out there that deliver these kinds of results can leave your scalp irritated or greasy, and others require prescription, making them hard to access, and even if they work, they can sometimes have unpleasant side effects. OS-1 Hair is different. It's drug-free, so you can use it alone, or alongside any other hair treatment without the irritation, and it's also water-based, so you can actually use it every day without disrupting your normal routine. Born from over 10 years of longevity research, OneSkin's OS-1 Peptide is engineered to support your hair to look fully visible and thicker at any age. For a limited time, try OneSkin with 15% off using code JULIAN at OneSkin.co. That link is in my description below. That's 15% off at OneSkin.co using code JULIAN. After you purchase, they're gonna ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them I sent you. - Yeah. - Wow. - So, but that's how wild- - But kept under control. - Yeah. - 'Cause she could have, if she turned, she would have exposed that L. Ron Hubbard knew all about the illegal things and- - What? - They were just doing his orders. - I just think about what you were saying earlier about the genesis of all this time when L. Ron Hubbard comes up with the idea of Scientology. You made a great point that it's like during the nuclear scare era of the 1950s and '60s where people were like, "The world could end tomorrow," so he can get people, even smart people, to be like, "You know what? "This seems like the thing, as crazy as it sounds." But, you know, what kind of control do you have to have to be able to take like a totally, you know, unsuccessful guy? L. Ron Hubbard was not a successful writer. His writing, he wrote a lot, but he, it was shitty stuff. - Yeah. - You know, and just create this whole thing without there being something bigger at play. And what I'm getting at is this same era of like doom and destruction, dawn of the Cold War, is when you have all these crazy, crazy, crazy people with crazy CIA conspiracies going on like MKUltra, them trying to do all kinds of shit to people to work on mind control, basically. It would make sense to me that you would try to make some sort of organization that's under your umbrella, meaning in the United States, obviously they operated globally, but it's a guy who's from the United States creating it who could also move it globally, where you get some assets in other places, and try to experiment with how much you could use now in the United States. - Yeah. - And I think that's what's happening. - Yeah. - I think there's some natural tendencies to control people, meaning not necessarily putting some LSD in your drink and trying to figure out if then you listen to 'em. - Yeah. - But like, if you actually do a long-term brainwashing of people, could you get them under your thumb? And then maybe there's, I don't know, and now it gets to 12D chess. They use that for something moving forward. Could you see that being a possibility for the genesis of this? - Well, Hubbard, in the early days before 1950s, he was involved with Aleister Crawley. - Yep. - He was also dabbling in hypnotism and all of these different things. And he also, from, I think if you read, is it Russell Miller? - Yeah, Russell Miller, "Barefaced Messiah" is a really good book that documents and exposes the fraud of L. Ron Hubbard for the entire span of his life. Literally, like, every single thing that I thought I knew about L. Ron Hubbard is documented as false in that book. - Yeah, and there's a lot of folklore in there. But Hubbard wrote a lot about what they call in Scientology, PDH-ing, which is pain drug hypnosis. So you torture somebody and drug them and you hypnotize them, and then they do, that's like Manchurian candidate kind of shit. And I think, people think, people think that because of the way Scientology operates, they must be, there must be some CIA or FBI or some kind of government intel connection there. I think it is, Hubbard was like, "No, no, I learned about that. But I want it for me, not for, I don't wanna be the tool of them. I'm gonna be the guy who perfects this." And you talk about those programs where they're drugging people and they're doing all these things. And they have all these like remote viewing guys that they're doing projects with and stuff. In Scientology, they have this thing called, you know, this thing called exteriorizing, where you can basically leave your body and be anywhere and see what's going on. That's a real thing in Scientology. - Well, it's complete bullshit. - But it's a real thing that they teach you that you should, that you could do. And if you have some sort of fever dream that matches that, you're like, "Fucking A, I'm getting, I'm leveling up in here, you know?" - They have, in one of their magazines called The Advance Mag, they have, Advance Magazine, they have OT Phenomenology. - Yeah, they have OT Phenomena stories, where- - OT Phenomena. - OT Phenomena. - So operating thetan, that's what the person who knows about Lord Xenu and the body thetans, and all, they do all the things to get rid of all those body thetans. Once you get rid of all those body thetans, and you go all the way to the top of Scientology, you basically become uncumbered, unencumbered by all these aliens, and you become a god. And that's when you can, you know, I'm gonna zip over to Florida real quick. - So these, the OT Phenomena stories are like, "Oh, and I was, down the highway and I perceived that there was gonna be an accident and I moved out of the way. Yeah, that is another crazy thing about operating fate and phenomena. I want to say over the last 20 years where they've been posting these stories, they mostly involve vehicles not getting in accidents or finding a really good parking spot that I never would have been able to find. Those are like- I can think of some things on the list I'd want to put above that. Yeah. Those are the most common stories. Like, then the car verbed in front of me and for some reason I just turned the wheel a second earlier because I perceived that there was going to be an accident. Yeah, I exteriorized and I saw the vehicle that I couldn't see inside the car, but I could see it from above the traffic. These are real stories that they put in these magazines. It's like the three-eyed raven, basically, in real life. Yeah. And so they're like, that's kind of the sales pitch you get if you're a Scientologist. Like, well, you want to become OT. All of these, whatever, if you're getting sick or your wife's bragging on you or whatever, that all gets sorted out when you get on the OT levels because you're not effect of the fucking alien chimney crickets that are talking to you to do shit and you can just be you. And so I don't think, I legitimately do not think that the government is in bed with them. Do they have people in government that kind of look the other way or they've got one of their lawyers or attorneys or bigwigs, donors that maybe plays golf with the Department of Justice guy that can maybe make this thing go away? That 100% is going on. I mean, currently. Mm-hmm. Some of the major donors to Scientology, a couple of them happen to also be major donors to the current administration. So they have, I mean, Tony Ortega has covered this a lot over the years, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter who's in office, they've got people there. Right. So they're not playing the side of this administration or that administration. They're playing the side of. The current administration. Mm-hmm. So. Yeah. And they're in it for the long game. Oh, no doubt about that. If there's a project that this guy could eventually blossom into something that's an asset to us, we're going to kind of keep tabs on him and keep him happy and invite him to all the things and do the this's and that's, and they'll do that. It's well documented that in Clearwater, when they were having major issues, in Clearwater, with the local town and the police and the government and. What years are we talking, approximately? In the '90s and the 2000s, there was a woman who died at one of their facilities, Lisa McPherson, and there was a lot of things going on and they were under heavy, heavy scrutiny. And you have an event, you invite all the local politicians and John Travolta dances with their wives, you know, just like, "Oh, the mayor's here. Oh, hey, Mrs. Mayor, do you want to dance with.?" "Do you want to dance with me real quick?" And that, I mean, your wife danced with John Travolta. You grew up watching him in "Saturday Night Fever" and "Welcome Back, Cotta" and now. And it's no accident, Scientology went into the event knowing to invite the wife who is a big fan of, whether it be Tom Cruise or John Travolta, it's all planned and very intentionally carried out. Yeah, very good spy games. Yeah, they know how to play the game. The only thing where they kind of fall down in Scientology is that they document everything. There's a paper trail for everything. But physically or is it also digitally? Physically and digitally. And even to the point of those counseling sessions that you do, those are recorded on video with audio. Yeah, that's crazy. So if you. And a lot of Scientology counseling is sort of like get you out of your head and like kind of look at the world from a different view. The other half is interrogation. It's what did you do, what are your overts, what are your withholds, what have you, what are your missed withholds? And you could be confessing to very highly sensitive things that you did in your personal life, and those are being recorded and stored on a central database where they go. And then they kind of, they categorize it as well. So they. That wasn't really a problem for us when we went to leave because we grew up in Scientology. So it wasn't like they had like, "Oh, this guy robbed the bank and nobody found out about it in 1977." Because I grew up there. But people that are in Scientology that aren't in the Sea Org, and they've been up to nonsense, and then they unburden themselves with that to feel better. And then Scientology is like, "Okay, we'll put that down." And so sometimes you see when people. People escape Scientology, Scientology is like, "This guy was a criminal, this guy did this, this guy did that." And they talk mad shit about that person, but we grew up there. So when they did that to us, I was like, "What do you mean?" I was a Scientologist my whole life. So you're saying I progressively became more and more criminal in Scientology? How did I become the big bad guy if I worked for you the whole goddamn time? Yeah, it's like, "Come on, guys." But that's what they do. Everything is just to whatever their advantage is to hold power over you and claim they have leverage. Yeah, and Hubbard laid out in his sort of the operations manual for the Office of Special Affairs and then the Guardian's office, "You never, never defend. There's no defense. It's attack, attack, attack. We always attack, never defend." Yeah, in Hubbard's words, he said, "To destroy utterly, silence, and a few other choice terms of anyone who criticizes Scientology." Deve, can you find the three tenets of, I guess, like, PR, whatever the term was that Roy Cohn believed in, the famous attorney? Are you familiar with Roy Cohn? No. So he was a famous New York City attorney, a fixer attached to a lot of very shady stuff in the '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s. Eventually, he died. He actually died of HIV because he was, like, closeted gay his whole life, and there was a movie, I think, where Al Pacino played him. But Roy Cohn actually even was a guy who advised a young Donald Trump legally in the '70s in New York. But he had three rules of winning, and rule number one was attack, attack, attack. Yeah. Rule number two was admit nothing, deny everything. Rule number three is no matter what happens, you claim victory and never admit defeat, which, you know, that's it. Hashtag Iran, but, you know, hashtag Scientology, hashtag David Miscavige. Hashtag David Miscavige. I'm hearing exactly the same things. Yes. And that was a tenet. Exactly. Yeah, so that's the other kind of crazy thing about Scientology is the way L. Ron Hubbard laid it out is that he was what they called source. He's the source of all of the information, and whenever they thank somebody, they sometimes say, "And I thank source for everything." They call him source. And so – but in his policies, he said, "You can never change what I've written." That can never, ever be changed. It's a policy that says – this policy says all the other policies can never change. Well, David Miscavige has been kind of massaging and sort of tweaking things to make it more for what he wants. Yeah. But for the most part, most of the nastiness that happens in Scientology is per a Scientology policy that they are to do that. So when they go into these cases and they say, "Oh, we don't do that," it's almost like, "Well, there's a – here's a policy letter that says that's exactly what you do, and you – and here's the policy letter that says you can't change doing that." So with the advent of the internet, more and more and more of these stories are coming out and that the policies are being exposed. And it's not – built into Scientology's failsafe is they can never not do that. Right. So they're kind of stuck where they can't – they can't be like a modern-day cult and say, "Okay, hey, when we do this with the women, people get really out of sorts, so we're going to stop doing that." They don't – they don't have that in Scientology and – They can't be a nice cult. They can't be – that's another thing. Some cults, you have the regular version. Some cults, you have the extreme version of that, like the vanilla version of that, and then you have the extremist version. Yes. There is only the extremist version of Scientology. There is no vanilla part of it. It is – it's – Tom Cruise says in that "Turtle" video, "You're either with us or you're not." You're either on the field playing the game or you're in the stands and you don't have anything to do with it. Here's where they play the magic trick on society though where it can look differently because I believe you. I mean you were in it. But the people who are in, say, the Sea Org. Or what was the top thing called again? The InBase. The InBase and places – It. ItBase. Places like that. You guys – you know you're born onto onto the actual commune if you will and everything and you're inside and you're separated from reality but then people who are at you know the lower levels just out in society they live in the real world a lot of the time and then just come in and do some audits and stuff like that so could you see how from the outside people who aren't in it we look at it and we're like well isn't that isn't like the way jenna miscavige grew up kind of different than how you know tom cruise not tom cruise but you know some other random celebrity just who joined scientology when they were 25 operates while they still operate as a real person you see what i'm saying there yeah absolutely i think in scientology they they sort of they sort of capture you as an individual when you're at you're at a low point that's what they use the low point to get you in and they say you know you're having problems with drugs we have a drug rehabilitation program you can do and you get all those drugs out of your body and then you don't have the drugs are what are making you want to do more drugs so if you get rid of all those drugs then maybe you don't want to do drugs anymore but then they tell you about all these other things you got to do and you think you're doing good and you think i'm helping people get off drugs i'm helping do this i'm i'm helping people learn uh like become more aware of how life works and stuff like that so they truly most scientologists are not evil people they're people that yeah yeah misguided they were vulnerable and they were convinced this is this path to become less vulnerable and be more kind of in in the driver's seat of your life and then they kind of fight as they find out more and more and more they're like and now it's this sunk cost thing like sunk cost fallacy yep i've been in here 20 years my kids throwing good money after bed yeah and now you're like and your partner your kids your friends your who you work for it you you're too close to the center of the web by that point to easily extract yourself you've heard me talk about my dad and the wall he hit in his 50s with his testosterone he was doing the same workouts eating the same stuff but his recovery was terrible and his energy was down which is why he started taking drugs he started taking marzman your body makes testosterone but a lot of it gets locked up and can't be used there's this protein called shbg that basically handcuffs your testosterone so even if your body's making it shbg makes sure your body can't access a lot of it it's like having money in the bank but your debit card doesn't work marzman is designed to help free lock testosterone so your body can actually use it it's got no synthetics no needles just real ingredients to help optimize energy focus and strength when my dad first started using marzman he instantly noticed an extra pep in his step with his workouts and throughout his life he was like oh my god i'm not gonna be able to do this for the rest of my life i'm not gonna be able to do this for the rest of my life and it's not like drinking a cup of coffee either it's a steadier energy drive throughout the day marzman is made in the usa third party tested and now available at gnc nationwide and they also have a 90-day money-back guarantee so there's no risk worst case you don't absolutely love it and you get your money back but over 91 of users report higher energy levels for a limited time our listeners are going to get 50 off the life plus free shipping and three free gifts at men go to mars.com that link is in my description below that's men go to mars.com link in my description below and i'll see you in the next one bye bye below for 50 off and three free gifts when you check out after you purchase they're going to ask you where you heard about them please support our show and tell them i sent you yeah and i think when those people kind of feel like i'm getting the ick a little from scientology now and they're also messing with you at the same time yes like hey you haven't been into the organization in a few years why aren't you here what's up with that in scientology if you're not continually doing scientology then that's called a bad indicator yeah so i remember i remember leah talking about this like where they would like call her in and she'd have to spend a month there so it's been a while but yeah when she was on joe rogan like a decade ago yeah exactly they they would be like no no you're fucking up so you got to come do this like how do you just just pull them out of the world and now they but i get it because you're in it yeah and and you risk losing your livelihood or your family if you don't play the game yeah so i think those people when they when the danny masterson thing comes out and they found out not only did he do all these things scientology knew about it from day one they knew it was a problem before some of these other victims came out like there's there the danny masterson thing is a crazy example but the people that came forward are just the bravest of the people that were victims there were many other things that happened and those people either signed something or they got a check or you know they made that problem disappear but when when when that is happening and then he gets convicted and they're still trying to help him out scientology to this day are still trying to organize his other lawsuits so that they come out and good in the end and i think that is the scientologist so like i can't i can't yeah whatever happens to me happens but i can't i can't be on the same team as these guys i'm on the wrong side of this i'm on the wrong side of this i'm on the wrong side of this if these guys are sticking up for this guy yeah whether it's scientology or insert cult idea here not even a full-blown cult but just like some idea it one of the things i really keep myself self-aware on and i encourage people around me to is is to never think you're above that or that couldn't happen to you it doesn't matter if your iq is 40 million you know everyone has some sort of vulnerable time or vulnerable point where if the right manipulative tactics are used on them they can agree to things that maybe later they start to question but now they're in so deep that they're brainwashed and they can't get out of it so like especially when i talk with people like you who were brave enough to escape it's not like well you went from being stupid to smart it's it's not that it's like you had to re and we'll get to this with the actual specifics of it but you had to rewire everything that you had been programmed to believe and create that new software yourself yeah we were running on a bad os right right you're on that linux ship you're on that old school ship yeah i would i would say cobalt but uh it's a lot but you're right it's a lot to walk that back yes it is a lot and it's still ongoing but you know again when you're from age four in my case in the very heart of it it is almost overwhelming how much you have to kind of rethink like well wait a minute am i thinking this because that's the reality or am i thinking this because that's what they taught me to believe and even even down to our marriage like for the entire time we were in the c organization they they drilled into us over and over and over again the people that leave they end up as drug addicts or prostitutes and they'll they'll be flipping burgers the rest of their lives and their marriages fall apart and yeah fear fear tactics 100 percent so much so that you know i i had when after we left like shortly after i was like all worried about it and mark was like why you're just granting that power to them it's bullshit yeah yeah they they rely on you doing most of the heavy lifting in to stay and all the all that nonsense that's going on they rely on we've programmed you good enough you're not going anywhere you're not going anywhere you're not going anywhere you're not going anywhere and if you do there's enough things in place around you in your scientology environment that'll knock you back onto the right track whether it's your family or your boss that's a scientologist somebody sees something going sideways with you they'll make hey dude you the everything's on the line here if you if you don't do this if you don't stay in scientology your life's over i saw a video the other day of someone there was an ant on a paper and someone kept drawing a line in the direction where the ant went and kept making it smaller and smaller and the ant would see you know it's a line he could easily step over but he thinks the ant thinks it's an actual wall and it would change directions every time to go in the direction that the guy drew the latest line and eventually it was totally locked in and i think that's kind of a perfect visual it is of of what you're saying you know where they're just drawing the lines and you're the one that's like oh shit all right that's a wall again 100 percent i think that's a perfect example of what you're saying you know where they're just drawing the lines and you're the one that's like oh shit all right and so when you when you realize that you have all of the cards they have no cards then the whole thing falls apart and you just have to say like okay i'm not going to do it screw it what are you going to do in our case and in my case specifically i didn't see my mom for 15 years when i worked at that property so she didn't work at the same property as i did she was in scientology in la or clearwater and i'm in scientology in the middle of desert in california so for me for them to say well you're never going to see your mom again it's like bitch i ain't seen her in 15 years i've seen her three times in 15 years and we i wasn't a big fan of hers when i was a kid because she was shoving all this scientology shit down my throat so that ain't i'm you know it sucks it sucks i haven't seen my mom in 50 20 something years or whatever i saw her once at a funeral and we went we went to another family event and she said she couldn't come or she couldn't be there and they said why and her family are not in scientology none of her family she has nine brothers and sisters none of them in Scientology so she said they said to her we were at the event no Mark wasn't there I was there with his dad though we were it was a barbecue in you know Kansas City just on her farm like we're sitting sitting around chatting on her farm on my grandmother his grandmother's okay his mom goes inside under the guise of oh I'm gonna go get something and refused to come back outside and Bernie Mark's dad went in to say hey what's going on you just vanished she's like I can't talk to them my entire no the future eternity of all mankind is threatened if I talk to them is is your father inside my father's not my father wasn't my father my mother okay when we when I was six we moved from Kansas City to LA my dad was gonna make it big in a rock band he was a bass player hey guys if you haven't already subscribed please hit that subscribe button it's a huge huge help thank you and his band the guys that were in his band with him in Kansas City one of them had moved to LA and was hooking up with some music producers and stuff and it's like dude you got to get out here we can we can we're going to be we're going to be a big band and so we moved to LA from Kansas City we lived in a house a single family house in Kansas City when we moved to California we lived in a studio apartment that was cost more than our house in Kansas City the guy that was in my dad's band who got him to come out was a Scientologist that guy tried to get my mom and dad into Scientology my dad said see I don't want to be you and my mom said sign me up and they got they split up because he said I'm this is crazy so they divorced they divorced and my mom went whole hog on Scientology now why did she do that what because what drew her to it I think she was a go-getter she grew up on a farm so there was a lot of working she was a hard worker they had to work they were my grandparents owned tobacco fields so they were making cigarettes basically they're making tobacco for cigarettes and she was one of nine kids she was one of nine kids and um I think she was just like small town in the middle grew up on a farm in the middle of nothing now you drop her into Hollywood and we're living across the country and we're living across the street from the celebrity center and this guy's like oh yeah we got Korea we got this guy we got all these guys and it's like shiny things I don't really know actually I never even really thought about what what did they use to get her in but the fact that my dad was like nope I'm not doing it but he didn't talk about Scientology he just didn't want to be in it so they split up but I was still allowed to go hang out with my live with my dad or live with my mom and you know we'd switch back and my sister and I would switch back and forth but my dad was like he knew early on if I talk I'm never going to see these kids again yeah side comment but to me that is a big part of the difference in perspective that Mark and I had growing up in Scientology for me my only caregiver was all in and it just you know there was nothing else right but Bernie being on the outside I don't know I just think that accounts for some of the rebel streak and Mark honestly well I could kind of when I live with my mom it was Scientology Scientology Scientology and Albert Hubbard wrote all these volumes and volumes of Scientology policies and there's green ones which are for the organization and then there's red ones that are for the technical like how to do the counseling and how to do the training and there's probably in all there's probably hundreds and hundreds of these things I mean the dude just spewed oh he wrote a lot just diarrhea of the typewriter there was no there's no drafting yeah yeah no no yeah rip it and roll yeah exactly someone told us a few years ago there's there's actually a psychological condition known as too much literary output and we're like oh yeah that's that's a real thing it's like certain writers and rafia they just have to just jam it out no matter what's happening yeah anyway whenever I get in trouble or anything my mom would go okay we need to have a little talk and then she'd pull out the Scientology books and find the L. Ron Hubbard policy from 1962 that has to do about the situation that I'm in right now and so I could well this one's the cane yeah the reason you make that anyway so if I could escape that on the weekend and go hang out with my dad who would have been the guy who was in a rock band trying to make it in Hollywood and that was the other thing the guy that the lead singer was still in Scientology of the band the drummer was Chick Correa's son Thad Correa and then the my dad and the other guy were not Scientologists so there's two non-Scientologists and two Scientologists in this band and um and my and they do gigs at the Celebrity Center they play at the Celebrity Scientology Celebrity Center for events and stuff they would do things that were not Scientologists they would do things that were not Scientologists were kind of Scientology adjacent and a lot of their fans were in Scientology and Lisa Marie Presley was living at the Celebrity Center across the street she was living there yeah she lived there from when she was very very young when she from when she was a teenager Priscilla just plopped her there and and her her boyfriend at the time her first husband ended up being her first husband went to school with Thad at the same Scientology school that I went to in Los Angeles they have one in in Oregon so all of these people are all interconnected they're all connected in six ways of Kevin Bacon I'm two away I got counseled by Tom Cruise and he's in a movie with Kevin Bacon to a few good men so boom right there anyway that's one degree is it one yeah you're zero if you're on Kevin Bacon pause but two but Kev but Tom is the first degree so I would be the second he's not the zero degree no he's second degree second degree okay okay either way here's Cedric the six degrees of Kevin Bacon is very real for me I don't know about anybody yeah he's a real far scum anyway but either way I could escape that when I went to go see my dad and then as as as I got a little older then I started going to Scientology schools like in elementary school then I had to go to was called Apple School in Hollywood and that's where the actor at the time he did was on this show I think it was called Voyagers punky Brewster went to my school didn't Leah go there too I don't think Leah went to Apple School I can't remember but anyway there was a lot of Scientology kids that were also actors Vonnie Ribisi he's an avatar yes he went to Giovanni yeah Giovanni yeah when we were kids it was just Vonnie he wasn't Giovanni yeah another great acting god they got some talent over there yeah he was a he was literally my best friend for a few years Giovanni Ribisi Giovanni Ribisi we went to school together and I had a mad crush on his twin sister Marissa and she was actually I think my first official girlfriend which is funny because I went to a school and had a mad crush on Vonnie anyway but as the years went by I eventually ended up with my mom most of the time and if I was with her I had to do Scientology there's no not you can't not do Scientology do you remember though from before you were six before she was introduced to it what her personality was like and if so did you see outside of obviously adhering to Scientology did you see like a massive shift in who she was as a person when she joined um it's tough because I have very little memory before we moved to LA because I was six right so I remember a few key memories when we were in Kansas City and I don't remember much else about my mom or my dad or my sister I remember like a birthday getting a Star Wars cake with the Darth Vader and a C-3PO and RTD2 and the space shuttle and I remember going like these guys don't even know what Star Wars is there's no space there's no space shuttle in Star Wars the going on that's one of my earliest memories going the but um but when we but once we moved to Hollywood um my mom did grow up old school on a farm so there was a lot of getting thrown around and a lot of getting slugged and getting beat the out of when I was little I remember that that's the constant threat just a lot of abuse my dad never touched me so there was I sort of associated the violence with Scientology because in Scientology um if someone's doing something that's not um per the Scientology kind of code of conduct it's okay if you give them a black eye every once in a while that's it's in politics it's written in policy it's okay to take them in the back alley and give them a black eye yeah so so that what my mom really followed that policy to the to the t so there was that kind of going on and then also the constant pressure to do Scientology do Scientology do Scientology and I never I really was totally into it. at it. I'm a great, like, if you tell me this is what I'm supposed to do and I'm going to be fine if I do that and you want me to do it and you're not going to beat the shit out of me if I do it, I'm going to do it as good as I can. But I don't want to, I'm doing it to not have that. I'm not doing it because I want to do it. And so- He didn't believe it. You were just like- I was, I did, I thought, I was kind of like, how can this dude that wrote all this in the 60s know what the fuck's up with me right here, right now? He don't know shit. He's dead. How does he know? From my perspective, when you're raised in it and you're literal, everything you know in life depends on being fully in, it's not a viable conversation even in your head to ask, do I believe this? That's right. Whereas you have the understanding of the other side. Yeah. And so then eventually I end up going to- I went to this school in Los Angeles called the Delphi Academy and it's a 100% Scientology school. The guardian's office guy, ex-felon out of jail was the headmaster at the place. Was that the Winthrop guy or the- No, Henning Helt. Henning, yeah. And he was also a giant lump of shit too. Yeah. And it sounds like they missed him in World War II, man. And he was English and he had one of the classically bad sets of English teeth. And I was just like, dude, I don't even know how you can be the public, public figure. I don't even know how you can be the public figure. You got like chiclets in there, dude. It's horrible, okay? Anyway, and then my dad moved to Nebraska from Hollywood. He moved to Nebraska. He said, I'm out of LA. I'm done with California. Is your sister still with you? My sister and me live with my mom. And she's pulling her into Scientology too? Oh yeah. My sister's like straight A Scientology. To this day? To this day. To this day. She's 100%. Scientology, Scientology, Scientology. So when I go to this school, it costs, it's like 500 bucks a month. This is the 80s. It's a private school. Well, my mom can't afford to send me there. And my dad just bugged out to Nebraska. And so for me to keep going to the school, I got to work at the school. So I work there half the day and I'm a student the other half of the day. Was that legal? I don't know. I was 14, okay? I wasn't, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't have my lawyer side-check the arrangement. Anyway, so I'm working. He didn't read the fine print. But now, but, and also I'm having, and I'm on the outs with my mom full-time, full-time. Like don't want to be with her. Don't want to talk to her. Don't want to, she's trying to shove Scientology so much down my throat that I'm like, I can't do it anymore. This is, this is crazy. She wants me to work for her and her husband's company for free as, as a, as a exchange for living with her. - And he's in Scientology, your stepfather. - Yeah. - Did you have any kind of relationship with him? - No, not at all. - Didn't like him. - He was a big dork and I could give two shits about him. - Right. - Shout out to Dan. Shout out to Dan. Anyway. - Did you feel like at any point, did you feel like your mom loved you? - No. - No. - I feel like she would if I did Scientology. - That's not love, that's. - But, but that's, that was my view. So here I am, I'm 14. I'm working for money and to pay for my school. Even after I covered the school with my work, they give me a little extra. They give me a few hundred bucks a week and, and cover my school. I'm not, I moved out with my mom. I didn't live with her. I live with my friend. - At 14? - Yeah. And then he joined the Sea Org. My friend joined the Sea Org. The one I lived with, 'cause I didn't want to live with my mom. His family moved to Florida in Clearwater and he joined the Sea Org. So then I had to move in with another friend at school. And this is where I'm just like, I'm 14. You got to remember that I'm 14. I'm now, I have to get myself to school. I have to feed myself and somehow also work at school and do school and learn shit. And in, in Scientology, they don't have grades at the Scientology schools. - No grades. They don't have these things called forms. And basically you do form one, form two, form three, form four, four, five, four, six, and so on. But when you're done, it's like you've, you, when you graduate at 18, you've done two years of pre-college by the time you graduate. It's some weird system they have. Regardless, not accredited means nothing. A ton of the kids that actually did graduate the school when they went to college, college is like, yeah, this, you went to a fucking made up fucking thing. This does fucking nothing for you. You could have gone to fucking Hogwarts. It might've been better. More people know about Hogwarts in this Scientology school. - Again, how is that legally allowed if they're not? - Who's telling on them? Nobody. They're all, they're not gonna tell on each other. Then they get suppressed, suppress a person. - Yeah, but can't the government like look at this and if they're not in on it and be like, all right, there's a bunch of kids at this school, they're not schooling. - There's no, there's no incentive for anyone to shut any of this down, really. - It's no incentive? - Yeah. Like just because it's wrong and it's bad. It's like, that's a lot of work to fuck with these guys. And you need a budget. - Yeah, but like, if I'm at the FBI and I take down Scientology, that's a career maker. - The way it was explained to me within the, by some within the government was, we need to have the gun that David Miscavige used to shoot somebody. We need to have him on video shooting the fucking people. And we need to be able to say, he was, he was there at that time. - We need to be there as he's exiting the room with the gun in his hand. - And if we don't have that, we ain't doing any, we ain't got anything on this guy. That's kind of how it was explained to me. But either way, I move in with this other friend, her name was Lauren and I lived with her and her parents and her sister went to the same school, but the Oregon location. And so I lived in her room. I lived in the sister that wasn't in town. She was out at boarding school. I lived in her room. That family joined the Sea Organization. - Everywhere you go, they go, they get a bump. - So I'm just like, the fuck I can like, it's like four months here, four months here. Okay, so I moved to one last place and I say, no more friends. I got to stop going with the friends 'cause they're all young, they're joining the Sea Org. I ended up living with a teacher that goes to the school. She had a son that I was kind of friends with over the years, but he didn't go to that school anymore. He lived with his dad, whatever. And so I stayed in his room with this teacher. I lived with her and I lived with a teacher that worked at my school and this random lady who was a paramedic, who kind of dabbled in Scientology. It was literally like, I'm trying to think of a sitcom that this is like. It was like Three's Company, but I was 14. - There isn't one. - No, it was Three's Company. I lived with two broads that were older than me and I was 14. - Yeah, that's what I'm saying, you're 14. You didn't have a childhood at all. - I did. I had ramen, but you wouldn't use, wouldn't boil in water. You just sprinkle the packet on and eat it like a sandwich. Anyway, so you just sprinkle the package on. I'm telling you, you're eating the same thing with less water and it's quicker. - It kind of tastes the same. - It's quicker. If you're 14 and you're living on your own, chances are you don't have a good pot to boil water in. Anyway, so then the, these people from the Sea Organization came to the school and over the years, the Sea Organization would send people from the Sea Org to the school to interview students and see who could get, they could get to join the Sea Organization. - Recruiters, they call them recruiters. - Sea Org recruiters. And they made a rule because they were poaching so many kids from the schools. No more recruiters talking to the students. It was a rule at the school. No more. You can't send the recruiters over here because they're stealing all our kids. - And they were getting complaints from the parents. - Yeah, it was a big issue. Anyway, so they send a team of recruiters over there, but the recruiters aren't focused on the kids. They're focused on the staff, the Scientology school faculty. And so I'm like, fucking, they can't touch me. I'm a fucking student. So there's no way I'm gonna get roped up and pressured into joining the Sea Org. And when you grow up in Scientology, there's always, this thing, you will end up in the Sea Org. Somehow, someway it will happen. If you stay in this bubble, the only route is to go into the Sea Org. - It's pretty much inevitable. - Your parents want it. Everybody around you wants it. It's the most dedicated thing you can do as a Scientologist to give your entire rest of your life to Scientology. So I'm at this place at the school, the recruiters come. They recruit the fucking lady that I'm living with. - God damn it. - They got her into the Sea Org. And I was like, the, and then I was just like, this is the fucking, how is this possible that I, they should hire me as whoever I live with ends up in the Sea Org. They should, I'm their best recruiter. - You're like, do you have a couch at the Sea Org? - Yeah, yeah. I'm good. I fucking, I'll bring in a fucking two people a week for you guys. - Yeah. - Anyway, so when that happened, I basically gave up. - You gave up. - I gave up. I was like, I'm 14. I'm trying to feed myself. I'm eating fucking dry ramen. that's a that's a low for even a 14 year old um a lot of bologna sandwiches i'm i don't have a car i can't you can't drive i can't drive i'm fucking i'm well no you're wrong when my dad lived in nebraska i went to nebraska and i got a driver's license because in nebraska you can drive when you're 14 because they're driving kids are driving tractors down the highway and the way to this day i don't know if it's still like that but i was driving in california when i was 14 with a nebraska license so if they pull me over i'm like you can see your license right here like it's from nebraska that's where i fucking live thank you guys for checking out this clip if you haven't already subscribed please subscribe and hit the like button on this video it is a huge huge help and if you'd like to check out this clip's full podcast episode that link is in the description below or right here and finally you can follow me on instagram and x by using the links in my description below and i'll see you in the next one bye in the description below.