Aaron Smith-Levin is a former Scientologist, Vice President of the Aftermath Foundation, and host of the Growing Up In Scientology YouTube channel. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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EPISODE LINKS:
Aaron's YouTube: https://youtube.com/@GrowingUpInScientology
Aaron's Twitter: https://twitter.com/GrowingupinSCN
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Books mentioned:
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OUTLINE:
0:00 - Introduction
1:21 - Thetans
5:19 - Dianetics
17:22 - God
27:58 - Sea Org
32:08 - Auditing
52:21 - Control
1:02:45 - David Miscavige
1:11:52 - Xenu
1:27:46 - Secrecy
1:33:49 - Mike Rinder
1:40:56 - Separation of families
1:47:51 - Tom Cruise
1:51:43 - Sin
1:56:39 - Corruption

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If Scientology was just getting auditing, when you wanted, about the subjects you wanted, and you could take it or leave it, that would be fine.

It's the fact that it's part and parcel to this entire organization and this entire experience that has, as a part of that experience, taking everything from you, demanding everything from you, controlling who you can speak with, controlling who you can have relationships with, who you have to erase from your life.

This is where, and it's hard to place 1 pinpoint on, this is where Scientology goes wrong.

It's really hard to do that, because the good parts of Scientology and the bad parts of Scientology are all just Scientology.

The following is a conversation with Aaron Smith-Levin, a former Scientologist raised in Scientology and have worked in the organization full-time for many years as a staff member and a C-Org member, including the job of training Scientology auditors.

Today, he educates the public about Scientology on his YouTube channel called Growing Up in Scientology.

To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.

And now, dear friends, here's Aaron Smith Levin.

Let's do a full overview of Scientology, its ideas, how it operates, how it wields its power and influence, and let's start at the very basics.

Scientology is a belief system created by L.

Ron Hubbard that does fundamentally believe that we are all immortal spiritual beings called thetans, that we have native godlike potential, that there is nothing more powerful in the universe than a Thetan.

And that through various decisions Thetans have made, they have fallen away from their native god-like power to, fallen down to a state where most Thetans aren't even aware that they are Thetans, aren't even aware that they ever have lived before or have these powers, and that Thetans are now in a state where they're trapped in bodies, trapped here on Earth, trapped in this prison of a physical universe, trapped on this prison of a planet, and that only Scientology can restore a Thetan to its native state.

Like is there 1 Thetan inside of me that's trapped in this prison?

But I'm presumably limited in some fundamental way.

So there's like 8000000000 Thetans on the planet.

There's 1 primary thing in animating each body.

Later in Scientology, you learn there's actually like tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of like sick, unconscious, half-dead Thetans stuck to you that are now an additional cause of problems for you.

But fundamentally, at the lower levels, the non-confidential levels, there's just 1 Thaitan per body.

I just would like to kind of explore the philosophy of that.

So there's a being that's all-powerful that's immortal, and its projection, its manifestation on this Earth is fundamentally limited.

And you're trying to, the process of Scientology is the process of letting go of those limitations.

I mean, a lot of religions have this kind of idea that there's, not just religion, but like we have the capacity as human beings to achieve greatness in all kinds of ways.

And that's the question we have with our cognitive abilities.

We start with an embryo and build up and into this organism and this world of opportunities before us, what are we capable of?

And the idea that we're capable of almost anything is a really powerful 1, and there's a lot of religions, there's a lot of philosophies, there's a lot of advice, self-help, that kind of explore those ideas.

And so, it seems like with Scientology, the application of this religious philosophy means that we're limited and we'll have to break through those limitations, and there's a process to break through those limitations.

So what can make it challenging to adequately and completely describe Scientology in the beginning is what Scientologists believe actually changes as they progress further into or further up in Scientology.

So the explanation that I've given is pretty consistent with what you would get at the lowest levels, right?

You're a thetan, I'm a thetan, everyone's a thetan.

Ron Hubbard would say the reactive mind is a collection of these recordings, mental recordings of any moments of pain and unconsciousness you've ever had in your life.

It's always recording in moments of pain and unconsciousness and that these are called, these recordings, L.

Ron Hubbard first wrote Dianetics in 1950, this was before Scientology came along a couple of years later, right?

So in 1950, when he wrote Dianetics, it wasn't a spiritual endeavor.

It was supposed to be a mental health, a science of mental health.

So as of that time, the earliest engram you could have was the incident of birth, being born was an engram.

And technically in Dianetics, he said you could have prenatal engrams, like when you're still in the womb.

But there was no concept of past lives as of 1950 version of Dianetics, right?

And so the idea there was that the reactive mind is essentially a stimulus response mechanism created through evolution millions of years ago to protect the individual from things that would harm them.

In other words, things that would bring about pain and unconsciousness.

So you have these recordings of things that hurt you, create pain and unconsciousness, and in present time, these things will react upon you in a way to cause you to avoid similar things reacting upon you in a subconscious, unconscious way.

So the reactive mind protects you from the trauma that is inside your subconscious mind?

Yes, and the idea is we've now, as human beings, evolved to a state where it no longer serves us beneficially, it only serves us negatively.

This was Hubbard's theory, and he said, so you can get rid of these engrams by basically recalling them and going over them again and again using Dianetics Auditing Therapy.

And if you get back to the moment of birth and erase the earliest engram, all the other subsequent engrams on the chain would vanish.

Earlier, similar, earlier, similar, earlier, similar, earlier, similar.

Okay, so that gives you a pretty good understanding of how L.

Ron Hubbard thought of the mind because that carries on, has applicability later on in Scientology.

I mean, that's a pretty powerful model of the mind.

I mean, Freud had similar conceptions that a lot of our traumas are grounded in sort of poor formulation of sexuality or imperfect formulation of sexuality in early childhood, something like this.

And then we're trying to figure out the puzzle of whatever we formed in early childhood.

In the early days of Dianetics, before he decided psychiatry was evil, He actually credited Sigmund Freud with some of the shoulders he was standing on in writing Dianetics.

So he still admired psychiatry at that time.

So that's an interesting moment of Dianetics.

You mentioned Dianetics, auditing was there too.

So if we just, before Scientology, what are the ideas that formed what we know as Dianetics?

As I've just described, that is the fundamental.

That is pretty much the nuts and bolts of Dianetics.

Oh yeah, no, that's what Dianetics in the early days was all about, was just auditing.

Auditing is the process of the one-on-one counseling, recall a moment of pain and unconsciousness, run through the engram over and over and over again, find something earlier similar.

1 of the main things that changed with Scientology is that birth or prenatal engrams were no longer the earliest engrams on the chain.

The idea is you have to get the earliest engram on the chain for the later ones to blow, which is a race.

And so, but all of a sudden now, with the addition of an immortal spiritual being into the equation, well now the earliest incident could be trillions of years ago in other galaxies and universes.

The model is, you have the physical universe, and then above that you have the theta universe.

So in Scientology, they'll use the word theta.

I don't know, theta is just basically thetan power, thetans collectively.

So Hubbard would say you have the theta universe, which is senior to the physical universe and creates the physical universe.

And remember, I said native godlike potentials.

So we're not talking about the god who created the earth.

We're just, like Scientologists don't believe in a god, but We'll get into that later.

We're talking about just creating universes.

Like just when I say creating universe, essentially just creating different thing in simulations.

But it sounds like a little bit more like the ideas of Plato, which is there's these platonic forms, there's abstract forms that are bigger, more general than our particular reality here.

And those forms are used to construct the reality.

Well, I grew up in a cult, so I'm not familiar with the works of Plato.

You can't use that as an excuse for everything.

I would like to, you know, non-jokingly steal a man the case because a lot of philosophies, a lot of religions, a lot of even scientific endeavors are a little bit full of uncertainty.

You can call it bullshit, but you're on unsteady ground because we're surrounded by mystery.

And you have to take these ideas somewhat seriously and see where those ideas go wrong.

This happens with communism, this happens with capitalism.

These ideas sound beautiful in their ideal forms, and then they somehow go wrong, and some go more wrong than others.

And so I don't think, sort of, it's easy to sort of caricature and make fun of the ideas, I think if we take them seriously, you'll start to understand, like, when you're in it, it was serious.

It's, you know, the devil is going to be a charismatic person, he's not going to be a caricature or ridiculous person.

So that helps us understand which ideas will sound appealing but will become dangerous.

In fact, it's 1 of the thrusts I have on my channel is wanting to talk about Scientology in a way that would actually resonate with current Scientologists, not just resonate with former Scientologists.

I want people who are still in to be able to hear how I talk about it and go, wow, he's being really fair and really accurate.

If you look at the, you know, let's take 1 of the worst places on earth is North Korea.

And the reality is there's a lot of citizens of that nation that deeply love the leader because they've grew up in that way.

And you, I mean, through fear, through all kinds of manipulation, through propaganda and so on, they're not allowed to love members of their own family, they're not allowed to have romantic love, they're only allowed to have love for the leader.

And to reach those people, you have to empathize with the fact that in their eyes, in some sense, this is a great man, this is a god, a messianic figure.

You can't just make fun of the ridiculousness of the situation, that there's this pudgy person waltzing around creating propaganda.

Like it's so easy, Hitler too, to make fun of, to make a caricature of the person, but this is a real person, a real person that influenced the minds of millions of people.

In the case of Hitler, you know, tens of millions of people, and created a huge amount of suffering.

Not because of the caricature version, but because he was a charismatic leader.

He was somebody that people deeply, deeply loved.

And that just, I mean, with the abuse of any kind of ideology, this happens over and over.

And so it's interesting because Scientology is so close to the core of what is America because so many Americans are involved with it, so it's interesting to study the beauty and the power of the ideas that underlie it and where things go wrong.

And I'll just say, it's interesting to note, you would never get a representative of the Church of Scientology to sit down and have a conversation with you and even be as fair and accurate about Scientology as I'm going to be,

Do you honestly deeply believe that's the case?

There's not going to be a high-level official that would sit down for a conversation?

Because I think that given the current dynamics of what's happening, I think in order to say, from their perspective, in order to save the church of Scientology, they have to be transparent and authentic, basically still mend their case, but better.

Well, we'll talk about the other ways you could do that, which is the manipulation through propaganda, through controlled media, and all that kind of stuff.

They paint themselves into a corner of not being able to send a representative out into the world to speak honestly about it, because you're literally not allowed to.

So when faced, you know, if you're just sitting down with an entertainment journalist, a representative might be able to fudge their way through an interview, but sitting down for a long form format interview with someone who is gonna ask them about Zinu and the body thetans and Leah Remini and Lisa McPherson, that's a no-go zone.

So I'm representing why it will never happen, but shit, I would tune in for that interview.

You don't think David Miscavige would sit down for an interview?

You know, in general, journalists in these kinds of situations can be, can attack in a way that doesn't empathize and doesn't come from a place of deep knowledge and understanding.

And I think it's possible to have serious conversations with people like that in an empathetic way, but it's also in a challenging way.

I think there's a huge amount of trust required.

And obviously for a very secretive organization, the amount of trust, yes, might be too much required.

Anyone over there, if they've done their homework, knows you're gonna be as fair as anyone in the world's going to be.

And yet, there's simply things they're not allowed to talk about, and they're not even allowed to say, I'm not allowed to talk about it.

So that's a fundamental part of the Church of Scientology is the secrecy.

So that's where you're trained as you go up through the ranks is secrecy, secrecy.

It's that there's an entire, the entire upper half of Scientology's bridge is simply confidential.

I mean, and I never even did those levels when I was in Scientology.

I didn't learn what Scientologists actually believe on those upper levels until after I got out of Scientology and I was fricking born and raised in it.

Yeah, I was 4 years old when my mom got in.

And then about 7 years ago, got out and you're on what YouTube channel now?

So I was 4 years old when my mom got introduced to Scientology.

And she got in really fast, really quick.

So, I was 12 years old when I was taken out of school and started officially full-time working for Scientology.

Okay, so in various capacities, I worked for them from the ages of 12 to the age of 26.

Okay, so, and then I was 34 when I officially parted ways with Scientology, which was really more them officially parting ways with me, but we can get into all that later.

That's just kind of how Scientology does it.

And what do you do now in terms of Scientology?

So now I run, growing up in Scientology, the YouTube channel, but what I primarily do is I help run an organization that helps people who are escaping from Scientology.

I'm the vice president of the Aftermath Foundation.

And we created the foundation after the television show Leah Remini, Scientology in the Aftermath.

And there was such an outpouring of support from non-scientologists all over the world.

What can we do to help people leave Scientology?

That We decided to create a foundation and it's been incredibly successful.

We've helped people escape from all regions and echelons of Scientology.

We've accomplished, what we've accomplished is far beyond what we actually envisioned would be possible.

So we'll talk about the negative aspect, the abuses of power, but let's just explore the ideas a little bit more.

So the public facing 3 fundamental truths of Scientology, maybe correct me if I'm wrong.

Man is an immortal spiritual being, like we said with Thetans.

His experience extends well beyond a single lifetime, so infinite memory backwards.

His capabilities are unlimited, even if not presently realized.

Yeah, so when I say godlike, I really just mean, you know, Thanos, like unlimited.

So when I say godlike, I just mean the most powerful entity, the creator, the prime mover unmoved, except we are all that.

You know, a Thetan in Scientology, a Thetan has no position in space or time.

A Thetan does not actually exist in the physical universe.

It might choose to locate itself in the physical universe, right?

And then forget that it made that decision and then sort of get caught and trapped in the physical universe, but that once the Thetan is restored to its native powers, everything you see here in the physical universe is just a Thetan playing a game.

Like literally, We are in a simulation right now of some thetan.

So like physics doesn't have to make sense when we're talking about it this way.

Like technically you're a thetan, I'm a thetan, we're here, but this could also all just be another thetan's game.

Yeah, it's just thetan's everywhere, thetan's,

Because I read there is a sense of a supreme being.

Is that basically the thetan that's at the core, at the bottom of it all?

Scientology has this concept of the dynamics, how Ron Hubbard breaks life into 8 different dynamics.

And the dynamic meaning a thrust towards survival.

So he would say, you know, the first dynamic is you yourself, second dynamic is your family, third dynamic is any other group that you're a part of other than your family.

The fifth dynamic is plant and animal life, all non-human life.

Seventh dynamic is sort of like spirituality, collectively, us as thetans.

Ron Hubbard says, Scientology doesn't deal with the eighth dynamic, but we recognize that people have this idea of a supreme being.

And so Scientology says you can call the eighth dynamic the supreme being dynamic, but we call it infinity.

Just the allness of everything without having to define it.

And then they sort of do a little dance and they're like, Scientology, the purpose of Scientology is to get you to the point where you have your own understandings or realizations about the nature of the eighth dynamic.

We don't tell you what you have to believe about that.

There's no point in Scientology where they sit you down and say you're now required to revoke your belief in a Supreme Being.

It's just that everything in Scientology is inconsistent with a belief in the Supreme Being.

You can still find Scientologists who through cognitive dissonance will tell you they believe in a Supreme Being.

How is this inconsistent with the Supreme Being?

Because like, Thetans could just- Because Thetans have created everything, not God.

Okay, so Thetans created, they're also a creative force, they're not just the force that runs everything.

But can't those be just the fingertips of a god?

Sure, the only way you could reconcile a supreme being is if you say a single supreme being created all theta.

But that's not what most people think when they talk about God.

They're talking about a creator of The physical universe.

I mean, even as I've described Scientology so far, none of what I've said is something I even subject to ridicule.

This is pretty common sense stuff, actually.

I mean, if you believe in spirituality or spirits at all, there's nothing I've described so far that's crazy.

You know, believing in past lives isn't particularly unique or special, right?

The fact that Scientology does this little dance of pretending to believe in a God, I mean, it's even like a PR line.

Scientology representatives will tell you you can be a Christian and be a Scientologist.

Well, let me tell you what, Christians don't believe in past lives and lives on other galaxies and planets and universes.

can't be a Christian and be a Scientologist.

you can't be a Christian and be a Scientologist, but they will say that.

It's just an example of sort of the fundamental baked in dishonesty.

Because it's so important to Scientology on the organization level to have tax exempt status,

I wonder, do you know the process of what it takes to prove that an organization is a religion?

While going through that process with the IRS, for the second time, by the way.

Scientology actually had tax exemption in the early days and the IRS pulled it and then they got it back in 1993.

While going through that process again, the IRS actually took issue with the fact that Scientology was claiming you could be a Scientologist and a member of another religion.

The IRS actually said, pump the brakes there.

If you're gonna say that, we're gonna say you're not a religion.

And they actually put in writing to the IRS, no, no, no, no, no, that's not what we meant.

We meant in the beginning, you can be both, but eventually you just have to be a Scientologist.

So you mentioned the 8 dynamics, but you also mentioned survival.

So that seems to be a core principle that human existence is about survival.

Can you elaborate what is meant by survival?

Are we talking about the survival of the human species, survival of the individual humans, survival of the manifestation of thetans in human form?

So it would be all of that because survival is the dominant force across all the dynamics.

Ron Hubbard, it was either Dianetics or Science of Survival.

He says he discovered the principle upon which all life exists, and that is all life, no matter what it is trying to do, are you ready, Lex?

I'm trying to get you to take seriously the power of the ideas behind Scientology because I think those ideas are not bad ideas.

They resonate with a lot of ideas throughout philosophy, throughout religions, throughout the history of human civilization.

The interesting aspect is how it goes wrong.

But here's the thing, Lex, here's the thing.

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Aaron Smith-Levin: Scientology | Lex Fridman Podcast #361