It was the fall of 1970, I was 17, and I was just starting my studies at the University of Utah, majoring in music. I've been making music since I was four years old, coming from a family of musicians, and I always thought I was going to be a musician, but that year I questioned that assumption. Denying everything my parents wanted for me caused me a strong morning struggle, but at the same time, I knew I had to go my own way. This inner struggle, prevalent among people my age, was one of the factors that made me vulnerable to Scientology.

I was very interested in psychology and attended an introductory course that interpreted everything in favor of behaviorists. Little has been said about other forms of psychology that might have suited me better. With the limited information I had, I concluded that this organization was of little use and resumed my search.

At the university, there was a professor of music, Sally Peck, who studied Scientology. Sally was the leading violist of the Utah Symphony Orchestra and a respected member of society. One of her students told me about Scientology and took me to a free lecture on communication in December 1970, shortly after my eighteenth birthday. There was nothing amazing about the content of the lecture, but I was impressed by the people. Many of them were artists and musicians who seemed to gain a deep understanding of the basics of life and their creative work here. After the lecture, I bought a book on Dianetics and spent my Christmas vacation at home in Michigan reading it. I just couldn't put this book down – I was fascinated. L. Ron Hubbard seemed to have developed a groundbreaking theory about the human mind and the cause of all human aberrations, as well as a technique called auditing, designed to put the theory into practice and thus free the world from war and madness. This is how my journey began. Back in Salt Lake City in January 1971, I began my first Scientology course.

Bait

I think it's important now to explain what it was about Scientology that attracted me. Every cult, no matter how sinister it may seem, has something positive in it that is used as bait to attract people. After all, if everything in the cult was negative, no one would have joined. I do not believe that masochism is part of human nature, people do not want to suffer from the humiliation and degradation that flourish in cults; People join a cult because they think there is something about it that can help them change some undesirable things and grow as a person to live a fuller and happier life.

In Scientology, auditing is used as bait. Auditing is a process that takes place between two people, the auditor (therapist or counselor) and the preclear (PC, audited person). The auditor's job is to ask the preclear a question, listen carefully to the preclear's answer, and confirm what the preclear said by saying "thank you" or "good" after the preclear answered. The preclear's job is to look into one's own mind and answer the question. One of the basic rules of auditing is that the auditor never judges the preclear, which means that the auditor never tells the preclear what he thinks the answer should be or what the preclear should think. In this way, the preclear is encouraged to find answers within himself rather than relying on someone else to do so, which advances the individual's self-determination. The premise here is that the answers are within each of us, and we are quite capable of finding them.

I found this idea inspiring and mentally and spiritually stimulating. What I didn't realize at the time was that the idea of asking questions and getting answers had been around for a long time, dating back to the time of the ancient Greek philosophers, and that there were legitimate forms of psychotherapy, not related to any cults, that were based on the same premise. To me, like many others involved in Scientology, it seemed to me that Hubbard had come up with something new and wonderful.

Hubbard claimed to be an opponent of authoritarianism. In the end, we only had to look within ourselves to find the truth. There was no need to rely on anyone's authority. Except for him. And this is where all the contradictions come into play. The Sea Org, the inner circle of Scientology, is one of the most authoritarian groups imaginable. Many people who were initially fascinated by Scientology because it defended independence and self-determination later found themselves under a totalitarian dictatorship on a ship with L. Ron Hubbard at the helm. Hubbard said, "There are no absolutes," but the closer you get to the inner circle of Scientology, the more you discover that Hubbard's authority is an absolute that brooks no criticism or doubt.

If only I had known in those first months what I know now; if only I knew that any display of self-determination that contradicts LRH's whims is severely punished; if I knew that the world LRH created is a world where no one can be trusted, where "friends" and even relatives write denunciations of each other; if only I had known that L. Ron Hubbard's son, Quentin, would eventually commit suicide after several suicide attempts because life under his father's control would become unbearable for him; if only I knew that Hubbard had in fact created a world completely opposite to what he promised us, that he had betrayed everything he called valuable, that he had betrayed and shattered my dreams and the dreams of many others... If I had known all this in January 1971, when I began my first Scientology course, I would have run as far and as fast as I could. But destructive cults like Scientology don't tell you these things. Deception is used to draw people in, then mind control techniques to catch them, and that's exactly what happened to me.

The idea of giving and receiving auditing appealed to me tremendously. In auditing, I saw great potential to make a real difference in people's lives. Many people in the arts are attracted to auditing because they feel that the process helps them discover and realize their creative potential.

They have no idea that the price they ultimately pay is slavery in a cult that stifles any possibility of creativity. There are celebrities who practice Scientology, such as Priscilla Presley, Karen Black, John Travolta, Chick Corea, and others who I'm sure will disagree with me. Although these people have already taken many advanced courses, the powers that be in Scientology take great care, for obvious reasons, to ensure that these celebrities never see the dark side of Scientology. They are treated in a special way in centers established specifically for them, called Celebrity Centers. When they visit Scientology organizations, such as the Fort Harrison Hotel in Clearwater, Florida, they get the best rooms and are served by uniformed waiters in the elegant dining room. They are never shown the garage where Sea Org apostates are sent to live as punishment. It's something that Priscilla Presley has never seen, you can be sure of that. She and her daughter were never locked in a chain box on the ship, as they had been in my presence several times while I was aboard the Apollo. She still sees Scientology the way I saw it when I first came into it, and she will never be allowed to see anything else, nor will she allow herself to believe written evidence like mine.

In those early months, I saw Scientology as a group of powerful but gentle people working together to free people from their spiritual prison, and thus create a world without war and madness, where every person would be endowed with dignity. As the months went by and I became more familiar with it, I decided that Scientology, and only Scientology, had the means to create such a world. I have come to the conclusion that nothing is more important to me than doing Scientology. By March 1971, I had dropped out of university to devote my time to it. One of my music teachers, with whom I was on friendly terms, saw what was happening to me and was very concerned about it. I "coped" with it, pointing out that Sally Peck, the leading violist of the Utah Symphony Orchestra and a respected member of society, was involved in Scientology and felt that she had benefited a lot from it. (Sally was another example of celebrity, locally) Although Chris was never fully convinced, I eventually persuaded him and his wife to come to the center and get some auditing. Neither he nor she was interested in Scientology, this acquaintance was brief. I think they were just curious to know what all the fuss was about.