Last week I posted the first of a multi-part interview with former Scientologist Tim DeWall. In our first interview we discussed how Tim got involved and this week we continue to the next stage of his experience, working at the Church of Scientology of Tampa.
This and the other interviews I do on this channel are all being done in an effort to provide a more well rounded look at the subject of Scientology and how it is practiced in the real world versus what you are told or read about in L. Ron Hubbard’s books. There is a huge difference between Hubbard’s utopian vision of a world free of insanity, criminality and war, and how Scientology is actually used inside its own organization. I also discuss this in detail in my recently published book, Scientology: A to Xenu – An Insider’s Guide to What Scientology is Really All About.
Tim and his wife Sylvia got out of Scientology just last year after decades of involvement. Let’s pick up now with Part 2 of our interview and see what it’s like to be a staff member for Scientology.
Here’s Tim.
Doug, are you still there, (revisiting here)? Maybe you should talk first.
I’ll let ya…
Questions, if you would allow me, especially for you would have to be something aimed at the conspiracy notion that you alluded to, you know, the other day.
What though, I don’t know.
So, if I were to dare, my Q now would go something like, What do you think?
How does critical thinking fit into the idea that Scientology is not the actual problem, that the actual problem is a hidden organization, one we don’t know about and hiding under cloaks and secret names.
But, the question is centered on Scientology.
Please,
How could it be that, given all the evidence that scn, the organization has against it, all the earmarks marking it guilty of being a cult, such as:
1. Having an undisputed leader
2. Being told how and what to think, punished if you should look elsewhere such as the internet
3. Enforcement of protection of the closed belief-system through a method of justice and/or ethics that serves to punish the individual when he deviates from said system of belief, its policies or practices in any way, in other words, “a system of punishing the practitioner for practicing independently or by way of individual thought”.
3. The (group) isolates the individual, both in thought and through enforcement, and,
in the relation to the rest of society, which is cut off entirely on both sides of the fence, making him vulnerable to manipulation. And, secondly:
rendering the individual unable to move himself out of the state of being controlled.
Given the above as factual, in the case of scn, I really have no questions.
Unless you have something to say? Really, I’m hungry to understand what goes on,
in the minds other than my own, not that I could ever hope to seriously know. And, though I cannot claim to be one of particularly tranquil mind, let me wish you peace. And comfort. Pleasure speaking. -mm
I dont think this marc marco character be real (me no thinks). He must be a conspirator! out to squash the voices of the enigmatic anti-conspirator Activists, gotta be. And,… Doug?
Having been org staff a few times in my 30+ year involvement I can totally relate to this. It was no different in DC or Boston. Same crazy behavior driven by trying to make arbitrary statistics to avoid the unpleasant consequences of failure — being screamed at, degraded, sent to ethics to do lower conditions, O/W write-ups, sent to the CLO for even more nastiness to be laid in on you. And all because you thought you were doing something that would make the world a better place. So very happy to be out. Glad you found your way out as well Mark.
Oops that should have said Chris not Mark.
….but, thanks for saying it freebeeing as I, too, am very glad to be out, indeed.
A scn life is having no life of your own,
and the real world does have that one ingredient scientology is certainly missing:
freedom.