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Jesse Tape Five

Tape 5, August 26, 1998 and August 27, 1998

Lawrence Wollersheim and Jesse Prince

L: Or staff member, where they're told what to say?
J: For days.
L: For days.
J: Yes.
L: Have you ever heard of a staff member or executive saying, "You know, that's not true. I can't do that"? Have you ever heard anything like that? What would happen if a staff member said-
J: Off with your head! You just-
L: You'd go into lower conditions and punished.
J: You would be disappear and be tortured until you came to your damn senses
L: To do what they told you to do. So basically, would it be fair to say that Scientology trains its people to commit perjury on the stand?
J: Yes.
L: And that Scientology's attorneys participate in this perjury?
J: Yes.
L: Knowingly participate in instructing the staff to tell lies.
J: Right. Nothing like a good drilled witness. You know, they're predictable.
L: OK. Why don't we save something for tomorrow and do some exercise? What do you think about that?
[Machine off, then on again]
L: Which one did you read? You read that one.
J: Mm-hmmm. It's the 27th.
L: This is Lawrence Wollensheim and Jesse Prince . Today is August 27th. Jesse just read a document called, what's the title? Pervasive Pretext of Religion in Scientology. I have some questions, Jesse, about when you were in Scientology. They call themselves a religion and according to our Constitution, any person with any set of beliefs can call themselves a religion. It doesn't matter if you're a neo-Nazi group, you know, an Aryan Church teaching hate of Blacks and Jews and you call yourself a religion. It doesn't matter if you're a, you know, organization that believes in prostitution of children. You can believe anything you want and set up a religion around any belief in the United States. We have very liberal laws so it's, you know, religion is anything. There are Satanic churches, lots of Satanic churches. They have 501(c)(3) status and they're entitled according to our laws to be a religion.
J: Right.
L: What I'm curious about is, when you were in Scientology, did any of the people profess in God, in the management? Did people believe in any God that you know of from your experience?
J: I'll just start from the beginning on that question. In 1976, when I first joined the Church, ooh, let me stop saying that, when I first joined Scientology, I myself was quite a religious person with a long religious background. I've been a Catholic. I've gone to Catholic schools from first 'til eighth grade. I've been an altar boy. I've been baptized. I've been confirmed. I've done all the major mass ceremonies as an altar boy and had a basic very strong conviction in God as a Creator and Person with divine force over man and everything else that we live in. So, I believe at one point I was even gonna go be a priest. The only attraction of Scientology for me when I first got into it was the religious aspect, the concept of a non-denominational religion that could bring different and all religions together, and introduce a new way of thinking, or a new science, or a new technology, or a new way of approaching the Divine, was what I perceived as going on. And Dianetics was like a window into the soul that would help you become more aware of this spiritual nature of yourself. This was prior to receiving any auditing. You know, as time went on, I didn't have a whole lot of Dianetics, thank God, but I never myself sincerely contacted past life events or things of a nature that if I looked at had any kind of effect on me that made a difference in my life after looking at it. In other words, they were just kind of like things that were kind of interesting, getting into these altered states, mild hypnotic trance-like states. All these kind of things, you know, but then what I found odd was there was never any kind of service whatsoever concerning religion in Scientology. In other words, there was never a day set aside to acknowledge humanity, everything that's here.
L: You don't get a day off to worship?
J: None whatsoever. There is no, not one single prayer in the religion whatsoever, and I actually asked someone when I was on the EPF, when is the damn church service? And I was just straight bluntly told, "We don't have any church services. We don't have any prayers. We don't have anything like that."
L: Did that ever change?
J: No, never. And at that point, I'm thinking, where is the religion? Well, between me having that thought, I had pretty much decided that this is something else going on here in Scientology that I do not want to be a part of. I had pretty much decided I was gonna get away. This was within the first three months, two and a half months of being in the Sea Org. At which point, I was just gotten by a bunch of people because I said I wanted to leave and was just forcibly incarcerated for about 18 months.
L: You were put on the RPF.
J: Yes, put on the RPF.
L: You said you wanted to leave.
J: Right. I said I wanted nothing to do with this. And it had nothing to do with religion at that time. In my mind, I had pretty much made up my mind that I had made a bad choice. But then, through this process of auditing which you happen to get on the RPF, you just kinda get sprinkles of little things that seem interesting, sprinkles of something that's insightful. And then you're constantly audited and in a highly suggestible state is that, I now realize, is kinda like being pulled along very slightly to the point where now I might as well just be here and see what this is about now. Maybe it's not so bad, you know? This is after getting a lot of auditing. The first 18 months in Scientology for me, the incarceration and Dianetics which is majorly what I got. Then I got out. I went in'76, got out in '79. And right around that time period, L. Ron Hubbard came out with this Dianetic Clear, Natural Clear, Clear this, Clear that. So, when I actually got out of Scientology, out of RPF, I pretty much immediately went onto their higher levels. They had a process, quad grades, where they asked you four questions for each grade, and I just wrapped them up in two days.
L: Let me ask a question kind of directing to where I think you're going, is, did the executives of Scientology believe, the people at the top of Scientology believe in God, any kind of God that you saw?
J: Well, let me get to that.
L: OK.
J: I'll get to that, OK? The next thing that happened after I finished these quickie grades in Scientology, is I did OT I. Now, this is really secret stuff here now. I do this OT I, and it's basically like a walking around class noticing things and being able to audit yourself. OK. Finished that, it was like a real nothing kind of event. Then OT II, these dichotomies. Now, these are the things that nearly made me crazy. A list of these dichotomies, just concepts, good/bad, hot/cold, and then lines that intersect them. These were like thought processes. It's seems like to me these are kind of like a fundamental way that people kind of thought of things but the detail that was being added to it elicited certain reactions. Like I would get hot, I would be afraid, you know, all of these, you know think of it, these crazy ass things. Now the kicker, I remember the day when I got that OTIII pack and read this crazy story about space invaders and all of this stuff. And this was like, I was already reading L. Ron Hubbard's science fiction anyway and thought that it was nowhere as good as Heinlein or something like that, you know. It was just very mediocre. But then there was that line in there that said there is no such thing as God. There is no such thing as the devil. It's all just an implant. At that moment, I thought, Well then, what is the deal with this religion? I mean, I became severely confused and upset about that whole concept that someone would say that it would take me being in Scientology now for two and a half damn years, for them to tell me, "'Oh, there ain't no God. There ain't no devil. It's just a bunch of crap."
[END OF SIDE B]

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