Into Scientology (and the RPF)

My auditing in Scientology started at the big blue Scientology complex in Los Angeles, the complex that used to be Cedars of Lebanon Hospital before Scientology bought it. . This was back in 1976. At that time I had been in Scientology for less than four months and I didn't like it. So I told a guy named Wayne Marple that I wanted to leave Scientology and the Sea Org. Wayne was a member of the Commodore's Messenger Org, or CMO, which meant it was like talking directly to LRH himself when you talked to Wayne. I was only twenty-two, and I sure didn't know anything about how the CMO or the Sea Org worked.

Now you have to understand that what I didn't know at the time was this: Wayne Marple was in charge of renovating the entire complex of buildings that Scientology had just purchased for cash. He needed a huge construction crew, and he wasn't about to let anyone go once he had his hands on them. That included me.

Within minutes of my announcement, I was hauled away by no less than five Sea Org guys, all RPFers, who locked me in a room. They told me the only way I would be allowed to leave Scientology or the Sea Org was via the Rehabilitation Project Force - the RPF. I thought this was a joke. There was no way I could be held prisoner by these people I hardly knew. My first thought was to escape and run to the police. But I couldn't get away. I was physically hauled off to the RPF and there was nothing I could do. I was a little skinny kid back then. These were big, strong, crazy guys who took me away and I was scared of them.

As the days and weeks went by I came to feel there was no escape for me. I was under guard day and night, locked in a room on the seventh floor of the building known as Lebanon Hall, writing up O/Ws under orders of Wayne Marple. Being just barely twenty-two, I started to freak out. I told my captors I just wanted to go home. I begged them to please just let me leave. But these RPFers just laughed. They told me I had to do the RPF auditing program to get out and the sooner I started it the sooner I'd get out. I tried to explain to them that I didn't want auditing or Scientology at all, that it was not for me, but to no avail. Emotional trauma aside, I decided I had to start doing something to get out and if that something was auditing, then I'd better get started.

That was how I got started on the Bridge to Total Freedom.

In less than three months I didn't have to be watched any more. I no longer felt terrified at being held captive. Now they allowed me to be part of the construction crew to renovate the Complex. I was in a dorm with seven other guys, in the tunnels under the buildings. There were no lights down there except in the halls, so when they turned the lights off at night it was pitch black. I knew my family and friends were wondering why they didn't see or hear from me any more, but I didn't much care. I was on a new program. Everything I had thought about life was changing. I just felt emotionally numb.

As I said, my first perception of auditing was that it was something I had to do to get out of the situation I was in. I didn't feel like I needed "therapy" or "training." I never considered that auditing was something I personally needed, but something was happening to me mentally because I resisted Scientology less and less. Stacy's conclusions about what can happen to a person as a result of auditing -- false memory, mental conditioning, extreme irresponsibility - that was what the lower levels of auditing were all about for me.

After eighteen months, I was allowed to graduate from the RPF. This was because the renovations of the Complex were finished, so a CMO mission fired into the RPF to get us all off of it and get us posted in the orgs. While I was in the RPF, my idea had been to learn as much as I could about the tech as quickly as possible because I had it in my head that that was how I could get out of there. So I learned all about the tech and held technical positions while I was in the RPF. Because of this, the mission decided to put me on a tech post when I got off the RPF. That was how I started on the road to being a techie for as long as I was in Scientology.

A new organization had just been formed to get staff up the Bridge. When two people audit each other while they are learning how to audit it is called co-auditing. That is how people get their auditing on the RPF, so I had a lot of experience with co-auditing by then. The Los Angeles area was known in the Sea Org (and still is, by the way) as Pacific Area Command, or PAC. So this new org was called the PAC Co-Audit Org. I was posted as a co-audit supervisor. I finished my Grades auditing while I was working in the PAC Co-Audit Org, and in 1978 I attested to Dianetic Clear.

Immediately I went over to the Advanced Organization in Los Angeles, AOLA, to start my OT levels. Prior to Scientology, I had a real thirst to understand more about the spiritual aspects of life. I wanted to know if it was really possible for a person to be able to leave their body and do "soul traveling." As a result of my study of Hubbard's work, I thought maybe there were answers to my questions in Scientology. I thought I would find these answers on the OT levels.

The Lure of Operating Thetan (OT)

I had a dear friend in Scientology. Out of respect for his privacy I won't say his name. I'll just call him Tom. We had gotten into the Sea Org at the same time and we were good friends. His mother was not on staff. She was on lines at AOLA as a public Scientologist. I enjoyed meeting with Tom and his mother because she always carried a copy or two of the Advance Magazine, which is a publication about the OT services at AOLA. Tom's mother would tell us about her new "abilities" resulting from auditing on the OT levels. She would tell us how she was able to move objects with her mind alone, influence others with non-verbal thought as well as leaving her body and experiencing realities outside of the normal earth experience.

Tom and I just couldn't wait for the next Advance Magazine to come out to read about how AOLA was making these OTs with these incredible abilities. Tom's mother was a very caring and mild-mannered person and I revered her. Looking back on it, Tom's mother influenced me to "keep going up the bridge" so that I would one day become OT like she was. It became easier for me to tolerate disappointment in Scientology auditing because here was at least one person that I knew who had achieved a "higher consciousness and ability" because of the OT levels. She gave me hope that I would one day achieve these abilities myself. She had also explained to me and Tom that she was taking a great risk in telling us her OT abilities because Scientologists are not allowed to talk about their auditing or sessions except to their auditor and case supervisor, and we knew that.

I remember one day in particular. Tom came running over to see me, all excited. He said he met his mother for dinner at the Celebrity Centre, and she was feeling kind of spaced out so he took her for a walk. As they approached a tranquil, wooded area, they stopped for a moment. His mother looked up at the trees and pointed to a small branch on one of the trees. This little branch was moving, ever so slightly, and she told Tom that she was making that little branch move with her mind.

Tom was so excited about this that he had to tell me right away, and it made me very hopeful that I would be able to do that kind of thing myself when I got onto my OT levels.

Operating Thetan (OT)

OT 1 involved going out in the streets and noticing things, from what I can remember. This in itself was disappointing to me, as I had already gone through this "noticing things" -- many senseless things - when I did "objective processes" in the RPF.

An example of objective processing is a process called "Operating Procedure by Duplication." Op Pro by Dup for short. The exact procedure for Op Pro by Dup is to have two tables about 10 feet away from each other. The auditor places a book on one table and a bottle - like a Coke bottle or whatever -- on the other. The auditor and preclear stand close to each other and the auditor gives commands to the preclear. The commands, as I recall them, are:

"Look at that book. Good. Walk over to that book. Good. Pick it up. Good. What is its color? Good. What is its weight? Good. What is its temperature? Good. Put the book down in the exact same place. Good. Look at that bottle. Good. Walk over to it. Good. Pick it up. Good. What is its color? Good. What is its weight? Good. What is its temperature? Good. Put it down in exactly the same place."

This is done over and over. The commands are enforced by the auditor, even if the auditor has to drag the preclear's unconscious body back and forth making him execute the commands. On the RPF, everybody had to do this Op Pro by Dup for a minimum of 25 hours. This is done to condition the preclear to accept control, with or without the pre-clear's cooperation.

We all did this in one big room, so I had a chance to see bottles getting smashed and books being ripped up when people got sick and tired of doing this. But there were plenty more bottles and books available to get them through the process.

Op Pro by Dup is just one example of an objective process. There are a lot of others, like the one where the auditor sits in a chair facing the preclear and says, "Give me that hand. Thank you. Give me that hand. Thank you. Give me that hand. Thank you," for hours until the preclear has some kind of cognition. There is another one where the auditor tells the preclear to look at different things in the environment. It goes like this: "Look at that tree. Thank you. Look at that flagpole. Thank you. Look at that power line. Thank you. Look at that bird. Thank you." On and on. Needless to say, I had had enough of these objective processes on the RPF. I didn't want any more on OT 1.

But when my supervisor at AOLA sent me out on the streets to do OT 1 she told me not to get into it too much. She said people usually finished it in one to two solo sessions. She was right. I was bored with OT 1 before I walked out the door but I did suffer through a couple of sessions to look good. I forget what new "OT ability" I was required to attest to for old OT 1. As I recall it had something to do with getting reoriented to the physical universe now that I was Clear. As I said earlier, OT 1 was senseless and boring.

OT 2 was senseless, but not boring. OT 2 is a series of "implants" that contained "dichotomies" as part of the implants. One definition of an implant is "an unwilling and unknowing receipt of a thought or the intentional installation of fixed ideas." (This definition is eerily similar to what I experienced when I first made it known that I wanted to leave Scientology.) Dichotomies are defined as pairs of opposites, like dark and light, good and bad, hot and cold, things like that.

The instructions for running OT 2 were to get the idea of the dichotomies over and over while running out the implants, and this was supposed to produce E-meter reads. I don't remember all of the "implants" associated with OT 2.

I only "ran out" two "implants" before I was allowed to attest to OT 2. I will describe them as best I can from memory. The first implant was called the "electrical Implant." I was supposed to imagine an electrical force going through my body while I read through the dichotomies, like this: "hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot..." You keep thinking that word as long as you're getting reads on the meter. Then you say, "cold, cold, cold, cold, cold, cold..." until that doesn't read any more. Then you say them together: "hot, cold, hot, cold, hot, cold.." until you don't get any more reads on that. At the same time I had to imagine an electrical force going through my body as I experienced these dichotomies.

The next implant was called "Tocky." On this one I had to get E-meter reads on the dichotomies while imagining a sun swinging from east to west. I remember becoming extremely disoriented and confused while attempting to imagine all of these things. It got so bad at one point I had to take a break because I thought I was going to throw up my lunch. I also got a very bad headache and ended up doing a "correction list" on myself to find my "errors."

Again, OT 2 was a huge disappointment, but I just kept on smiling. I was sent to the examiner to attest to OT 2. The ability gained on OT 2 was "freedom from whole track incidents." This was supposed to be a whole new level of OT ability that I had achieved in Scientology. All of this was leading up to the crown jewel of all of Scientology, the dreaded Wall of Fire, OT 3.

After attesting to "OT 2" I immediately routed on to the OT 3 course and I was so excited. Now the end would justify the means. All of the degradation of the RPF and the staff experience itself would prove to be worth what I was about to receive. With my heart racing, I got my OT 3 pack and quietly sat down to get my fair share of OT abilities. It was less than a half hour before the lunch break when I got to the Xenu story. As I read the Xenu story a sense of dread overcame me. I couldn't fathom how the Xenu story was going to make me into an OT and I became furious with myself and everyone else around me. The lunch bell rang in the classroom and I was out the door, not to be seen or heard from in that course room again for weeks.

When I "blew" the course room I started calling my family again to see if there was any way they would have me back. I asked my father about different job opportunities in his area. I considered using an academic scholarship I had received to go to the University of Louisiana to get a real education. So many things went through my mind. Well, finally the ethics officer and the course supervisor came and rounded me up. They sat with me in the course room and would not let me leave. I was told I needed to start auditing on OT 3 immediately or risk sickness or even death.

I was put full time in the OT 3 course room until I "understood" the material and was able to audit it. I can't say what happened to my mind after starting OT 3 but in no time I was "locating" and "blowing" body thetans. Within the Sea Org and Scientology, there is a certain "status" given to those who are on or have completed OT levels. Scientologists gather around and clap like crazy for people who are OT. Much more is expected of an OT; they don't have emotions and they are expected to be able to do just about anything. OTs are encouraged to use their OT abilities and it used to be a crime in Scientology to invalidate an OT. I soon learned that even if nothing is happening in your OT auditing, at least you have the status of being OT, which means you're special to the group. As an OT I thought I would be treated special. Just like in the earlier auditing, something took over and my attitude changed about the OT levels. I just had to put my nose to the grindstone and continue. The group agreement seemed to make it tolerable.

OT 4 was a rehash of the Clearing Course. It was required that I "mock up" the bank again and again, only to make it disappear over and over and over. When I attested to OT 4, I had the sensation of having been on a Ferris wheel for a week straight.

OT 5 was similar to OT 1 in that I found myself in the street again putting "thoughts" in people, plants and animals.

OT 6 was way different from any other OT level I'd done so far. On this level I was required to lie on a bed with my head pointed magnetic north and meditate until I floated out of my body. Now this is what I came for! I tried doing this over and over. Per the LRH written instruction, I was to leave my body, go to a foreign country and get a stranger to mail me a post card. Once I produced the post card I would be allowed to attest to OT 6.

After much effort I couldn't float out of my body at all. I never even made it out of the auditing room and soon lost interest in the level altogether. According to the OT 6 material, if a person is not able to leave the body its because they have "fleas" or more body thetans. So I was on a treadmill of looking for more BTs and trying to float out of my head and go to another country.

Just as I was beginning to accept the miserable reality that I could never finish OT 6, the tech changed! Hubbard had discovered a Ridge on the Bridge, and he had solved it by coming up with New Era Dianetics for OTs, or NOTs.

The old OT levels were canceled and replaced with new OT levels. NOTs handled BTs that had been comatose for centuries, perhaps even millions of years. By asking a BT What are you? Who are you? they would wake up and blow.

This change had a profound effect on Scientology income, because all of the earlier "failed" OTs now had something else to spend their money on, and they did in droves.

OT levels1-3 stayed the same, but OT levels 4-7 changed completely. The new OT levels 4-7 dealt exclusively with getting rid of comatose BTs. Come to find out, these BTs made up what most people perceive as the physical universe around us. All BTs had to be gotten rid of before any OT could stabilize and realize their true abilities. This new discovery by Hubbard explained all earlier failures in making OT's!

Hubbard Alters the OT Levels

A new NOTs course was issued, and a mad panic ensued to train auditors and case supervisors to deliver the new OT levels internationally. I was sent down to Flag to be one of the people that trained the auditors and case supervisors, and this was a very daunting task. David Mayo was the person who introduced NOTs to everyone, and he was traveling back and forth from Int (Gilman Hot Springs) to Flag (Clearwater) every month. He would instruct us to train the students to audit in a certain way, but then when he came back the next month to check on how everyone was doing, it would all change. Every time David came the "tech" changed, so what an auditor learned in March would change by April.

I had a lot of trouble training the NOTs auditors. Some auditors grumbled that Mayo was making up the NOTs tech as he went along. Others were upset because they thought Mayo had a hidden data line to LRH. In Scientology, a "hidden data line" means someone is getting info from LRH that isn't written in a policy, bulletin or tape. In fact, as I would learn when I was promoted to RTC three years later, Mayo was making it up as he went along because he was the main author of the NOTs tech. It was also true that he had a hidden data line to LRH because Mayo had been auditing LRH on NOTs before anyone else knew anything about it. Mayo's name was on every bulletin concerning NOTs, and rightly so, because he wrote the bulletins.

Later, in 1982, LRH got the idea that Mayo was sympathetic to the mission holders, who were trying to take over Scientology, or so LRH thought. So LRH ordered that Mayo be taken off post as Senior Case Supervisor International - Senior C/S Int, that is. He ordered him and all the Senior C/S Int staff onto the Running Program, had them all labeled security risks, and finally had them all declared Suppressive. (Mayo opened his own auditing center, known as the Advanced Ability Center, in Santa Barbara after he was booted out by LRH. I was one of the people in charge of sending plants into the AAC to make sure it was totally destroyed, and we succeeded in destroying Mayo and his center.)

RTC brought a RICO suit against Mayo, because he had AAC centers all over the world and Mayo's centers were making a lot more money than the Scientology orgs were. The RICO charges were based on the idea that Mayo had stolen the NOTs materials. Mayo's defense was that he had been the primary author of the materials anyway. The suit went on and on, and it was becoming clear that Mayo was going to win the suit. So finally RTC offered Mayo a hefty settlement in return for keeping his mouth closed about being the main author of the NOTs materials. The last I heard of Mayo, he was driving a Ferrari.

Hubbard (and Miscavige) Squirrel the Tech

Looking Back

Later that night, there was a power failure at Gold and security guards informed us that there was a possible intruder on the base. About 200 staff were made to stand outside in a parking lot huddled close together in the dark while security looked for the intruder. I was so powerful as an OT that night that I got to hide in the dark with others who were just as OT as I was!

Since leaving Scientology, I have found out that my friend Tom and his mother both gave up and left Scientology almost 10 years ago.

Words do not adequately express the pain and hard work I've been through to get my mind back since I left Scientology. Be that as it may, I am living proof that at least some measure of recovery is possible. But here is one thing I know for sure: There are no OTs in Scientology. There never have been and never will be. There is endless BT hunting, but I can give you a hot tip on this as well: There are no BTs either.

Jesse Prince