Why Is Marty Rathbun Supporting Scientology Again
Though information technology fabricated its HBO premiere almost two weeks ago, people are still talking about Going Articulate, Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney'south enlightening (and frightening) expose on the Church of Scientology and its members. Which says a lot about the public'south fascination with 50. Ron Hubbard'due south widely known only little understood philosophy. And the moving picture has also put the Church itself on the defensive (or into attack manner, depending on your perspective). It's a position that Mark "Marty" Rathbun understands all too well.
Equally a former senior executive within the Church, Rathbun—who appears as one of Gibney's talking heads in Going Clear—has spent the past decade attempting to reconcile the 27 years he spent in the Church of Scientology (he joined in 1977), including fourth dimension at the top of its ranks. In addition to a pop blog, Rathbun has connected with and counseled other quondam Church building members, whom he has also encouraged to speak out. Which has fabricated him Scientology's public enemy number one. Which suits Rathbun just fine, as he explained in his recent interview with Esquire.
What was it that virtually appealed to you about the concept of Scientology when you lot became involved?
Well, I got involved back in the 1970s in something that was actually their advice course. It was actually sort of a applied thing that really increased your focus and power to comfortably communicate. So that's what appealed.
You left the Church building in 2004. In the moving-picture show, we run across a lot about the thought of being shut out or disconnected from the Church. Only when one decides to go out of his or her own accordance, is there a formal way of doing that?
Yep, only it all sort of depends. It is really Byzantine and complicated, depending on your status and whether you are staff or some level of staff or whether you lot are not staff. Only the simplicity is this: If you lot don't tow the line, if you are critical, if you express criticism to any degree and you persist with it, you are labeled a "suppressive person." And when you lot are a suppressive person all other Scientologists, by longstanding policy, must disconnect from you in every way, shape, matter, or form, including any communication or any association whatever.
For you personally what was the hardest office almost leaving?
Well, the hardest part was leaving my wife. I spent the concluding ten months attempting to sort of reconcile the fact that I had to go considering of the extremity of corruption that was going on. She was a second-generation Scientologist and she chose to stay.
Post-obit your departure you began working with other former Scientologists in what you've described every bit a sort of "rehabilitation program." Are there sure teachings or lessons learned during your fourth dimension with the Church that you still yous hold on to today?
Well, y'all know, in actual fact not. I have spent the last six years counseling former members and helping them reintegrate, and I've done a tremendous amount of research deconstructing Scientology. It'due south interesting that you lot enquire this correct now because I just did an interview last week with Larry Flick on Morning time Jolt on Sirius XM where I kind of spelled this out. I attempted to exercise what you are proverb, I attempted to retain some of my more important learnings, simply every bit I deconstructed the subject I learned that they weren't really original. I just recently kind of recognized completely that I have come up total circumvolve to the point where I don't aspect [those ideas] to Scientology anymore. Considering I constitute the origins of them, the source of it.
Between yourself and other former members, do you run into a common thread in terms of why people make that last decision to leave the Church, or the feelings that they experience after leaving?
Scientology is such an effective bubble and such an effective defence force mechanism fix up in everybody'south minds that I found that is really not effective. I think really everybody I accept dealt with, and I have dealt with hundreds of people since I left, would say they left because the abuses that they saw or participated in—the effect of that outweighed the benefits. That's actually the lesser line in the final analysis. In terms of the mutual feel, there is one... and information technology's that in that location is then much put into creating this bubble with this whole disconnect policy and the suppressive persons and all that, that by design y'all are completely lone. When you get out, nobody shares your feel. In the final five or six years, my atonement has sort of been to contribute a lot to making information technology safe for people to talk, and connecting people together so they can share their experience. That's the first stride I think of helping them decompress and reintegrate.
The gist of what we, the general public, know or hear about Scientology comes from when some well-known member, like Paul Haggis or Leah Remini, leaves the Church and speaks out about it. Then it becomes a large news story. But for the most part, do people who leave the Church building remain adequately silent on the topic?
Yep. They walk abroad quietly, in silent desperation. Paul Haggis was in communication with me for many months earlier he always released his alphabetic character on my web log. That was a year before he spoke to [Going Articulate author] Larry Wright. It's a procedure. It'south a very intimate, i-on-one blazon of process. Because nobody understands what yous are talking about. Jason Beghe really said it all in simply a couple of sentences in the film when he said that you adopt this matrix of thought that'due south non your own. Part of that is that you lot are adopting a nomenclature... But its essential ingredients are non original. They only seem that way considering there is a whole nomenclature, which is office and parcel with that whole matrix.
Well the public perception is largely that information technology's a form of brainwashing. Is that something you lot would agree with, or is it more complicated than that?
I recollect that is one of those explosive terms. And I guess the one that I use is perchance simply as explosive, but it's more than technical and it actually is "mind control." Anything that is a super-closed kind of system of comeback, mentally, to some degree has elements of that. I call up Scientology is pretty farthermost on it, with creating this whole bubble.
The Church of Scientology was founded more than than 60 years ago, which is a long span of fourth dimension to cover in a two-hour documentary. Is there one role of the story, or part of the experience of being a fellow member, that wasn't covered in the picture show that you wish had been? Or wish had been covered in more depth?
Not actually. I hateful, you know I take done virtually 1,300 weblog posts. I have written three books. I have 2 more in progress, so it will be totally out of my organization. [Laughs.] Even so I'm in the motion-picture show for maybe a grand full of three to five minutes. This is an outsider's have [and] I just think he did a masterful chore. In the end, I kind of get against the grain on people saying, "You know it is going to influence current members and all of this stuff is going to influence the Church." I don't concur with that. What it's going to do is let people on the outside who might have an involvement in Scientology know what the consequences are. Considering he really, in an emotional but very factual and accurate way, chronicles what the objective terminate product is. You are dealing with a subject that is so subjective, and so you have to look at the objective outcome.
If yous were even so a member of the Church, would you even watch something similar this?
Equally a high-ranking person, yes. Because I would accept to deal with the fallout. But anybody who is non responsible for that wouldn't lookout it.
In the film, Jason Beghe describes yous equally "the Michael Hashemite kingdom of jordan" of auditing, which is probably one of the nearly fascinating parts of Scientology to an outsider. Both from the perspective of the auditor and the person existence audited, how exercise you describe or explain that process?
I just discussed this with Tony Ortega's The Underground Bunker, which is interesting only equally a point of reference. Considering he also brought upward the Michael Jordan thing. I said, "Well here is my recognition later on all of these years!" Because I connected to counsel when I was outside the Church building, I really looked at what sort of set me autonomously or put me in this place where people would say, "Hey, he's really good." And I recognized that in all this complicated, sophisticated stuff that goes with it, the only thing that set me apart was my power to instill confidence in somebody. And I came to the final recognition, having studied a lot of Hubbard'south influences, that he never invented this. This stuff was well in practice long before he e'er got the thought of being a guru... And so to the extent that you can inspire somebody and inspire conviction, you are going to practise them skillful. And y'all telephone call it Scientology or you tin can telephone call it Rastafaria. Whatever yous telephone call information technology, it'south the same process.
Past speaking out so often and so publicly, you've become a sort of target for the Church building. Do you ever have whatever regrets most doing information technology?
Well I am kind of more "sort of a target." For the past 5 years I have been the target.
True.
I of the things that I prepare out to achieve from the beginning when I did speak out, and I sort of promoted it, is that everybody remaining below the radar and posting on boards with anonymous names and all of this stuff has no touch on on Scientology. All information technology does is free up all of their resources to have out the people who do talk out. I promote people to stand and be counted, and hundreds did literally. What I predicted came to pass, and later on a sure amount of people stood up, they didn't have the resources to put fingers in all those holes in the dike. What they did instead, pretty clearly, was invested all of their resources in very publicly taking out the guy who told everybody non to exist afraid. In terms of regret, the answer is no. But I will say that I think I have accomplished what I ready out to accomplish, and I had more than a twelvemonth ago even when I did the interview [for Going Clear]. Which might give you some context for my demeanor and my answers when you see in the film. I am and then washed with this stuff I can't tell y'all, but they won't let me be washed. [Laughs.] Information technology's frustrating, simply I don't find it regretful because I felt it was something I had to do.
Practise you lot ever have whatever direct contact with Church members or is it ever via another outlet?
Oh, yeah. I mean, I have got 2 YouTube videos in the past 4 months of being ambushed by these people, one at LAX and one at a moving picture studio in Los Angeles, one of which went viral. Yeah. They wait and lurk, and they are probably watching me right this moment as we speak. I won't hear anything and so all of the sudden, a few months after, I will be walking through security and four people jump me. They'll go far my face with cameras and starting time screaming insults at me. Information technology'south a actually sophisticated course of psychological warfare.
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Source: https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/interviews/a34259/scientology-marty-rathbun-interview/
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