All the things Scientologists don't want you to know
583747
Scientology is a dangerous cult that has been responsible for more than one ruined life and death.  Whatever it may have been before David Miscavige took over, it's become a cult of personality.  This book shows the inner workings, the dark side, that Scientologists consistently deny or refuse to address.  The author is a journalist who followed up on her articles about Scientology for Rolling Stone Magazine with more research and more detail.
Truly, this was a great book with a lot of insight into this very closed organization.  I highly recommend it!
2124039
Excellent memoir re: Scientology and especially about the author's son, David Miscavige, the head of Scientology. I read this book because I have been watching Leah Remini's TV show exposing this 'religion'. I wondered why David Miscavige turned out to be such a monster. One reason may be his childhood: the author reveals that he and David's mother had a horrific marriage; lots of fighting, screaming and yelling. If this was David's 'role model' he may have chosen (even unconsciously) to act as horrifically as an adult as he had seen his parents acting while he was growing up.
The book also shows why so many people get involved in Scientology in the first place, something I have always wondered about. The author reveals how early on in his exposure to this 'religion', that a Scientologist showed him how to get rid of headaches (with no aspirin!), and how they used Scientology to cure David of a bad case of asthma, after 'modern medicine' was not very helpful. I always thought that there had to be SOMETHING that attracted people in the first place. so that they would stay. Now I found out some experiences.
The author really shows how miserable the lives of those in the Sea Org, and in the upper echelons of the organization, were. Besides the physical deprivations, he writes, for example, how as a musician, he was forced to work day and night on getting a piece of music 'just right', as the 'powerful people' in the organization, and especially his son, were complete perfectionists.
 I do think that people who crave power and control, even sadists and sociopaths, are naturally drawn to an organization like Scientology. Where else can they direct, horribly abuse, imprison people, etc., and get away with it? Even regular policemen, prison guards, etc., know they may not get away with any abuses they commit. But the opposite is true in a 'closed' group like Scientology, whose headquarters are either in a ship at sea, or in fortresses with bars on the windows located remote areas, where NO ONE on the outside can have any contact with them. Abuses there can (and do) go on for YEARS, completely hidden from the outside world. Perfect for sadists like David Miscavige, who callously beat up those who disagreed with him.
I have been involved in many 'New Age" philosophies, groups, etc. But I always told myself that if I was ever told that this one organization has 'all the answers' than I would definitely scram, and fast! Unfortunately, so many who came into Scientology, and all were told this group had 'all the answers', didn't immediately turn on their heel and walk out. And this mistake has cost so many of them many, many years of their lives.
3444784
This was an enlightening read. The issues with Scientology must be exposed. Also a very honest review of herself.
1787358
Warning: This book will make you paranoid.
It shows you just what kind of problems you face in securing your computers and life in the current legal climate.  it shows just what can be done to you legally without papers being served on you.  The current laws concerning wiretaping and gathering of evidence.  How black bag operations are planned and committed.  How your systems can be monitored in many many ways.
The book is current as of 2003 and includes information on the oxymoronically named "Patriot Act", as well as CALEA and other laws that remove your privacy from people with guns and an excuse.
And then there are the illegal ways.
The book does into a level of depth that the current law enforcement community would not want you to know.  And you do want to know, even if you don't have anything to hide.  (And everyone does have things to protect.  Your reputation, your credit information, where you keep your money, not to mention those things that may be unpopular with someone somewhere.)
Well worth getting if you have any interest in security, computers or otherwise.
3643735
It took me two sittings to read this book. I started it and was so disturbed by its contents that I had to set it aside. After a few weeks, I went back to it and finished it. What is so tragic about this book is that what it contains is true. A rogue segment of our federal government at the highest levels rides roughshod over the Constitution, rapes children, and murders American citizens at will. There are too many government secret activities revealed in this book that are also discussed by other researchers to have been made up. It all fits together too well. And the sad truth is that these criminals {e.g. Bush and Cheney} are still in power and abusing their authority. This book is a great argument for the repeal of the National Security Act and the "Patriot" Act. Our leaders hide behind these laws to commit abominable crimes. The Executive Branch and Congress are a mutual blackmail society where individuals are kept in check, most likely by the CIA, by threatening exposure of misdeeds {pedophilia, murder, etc.}. The criminals at the highest levels of our federal government think that they are "above the law". However, what they don't realize or don't believe {since many of them are practicing Satanists} is that they cannot escape the law of Karma or God's laws. They will pay for their crimes eventually. Read this book. It contains terrible truths.
3468172
The gist here is: PUBLIC BEWARE, NOBODY GIVES A DAMN ABOUT YOU. They, the .01%, operate clandestinely, that the world at large will never learn the extent of their machinations until it is too late to do anything about it. Very well researched, it is not a pleasant read. Rather it is very sobering.
3172880
If you're looking for an intro-level version of the latest rage in the charismatic movement into the evangelical church, this is the book for you. While it looks like a harmless book on 'Prayerwalking', it is actually a 'Gateway entree' into the world of the occult seeping into Christianity unawares, even well-intentioned. All without Scriptural foundation!
Everything from spiritual 'flag/banner-waving', 'prayer marching', declaring authority over territory to bind the enemy, shofar(ram's horn)blowing,syncretistic superstititous use of communion elements-anointing oil-salt-rose petals, etc. to cleanse demonically infested sites, etc. makes one think it's Harry Potter in Christian garb!
 Where is this stuff in the New Testament?? NOWHERE!!
Reader, beware. The Bible says 'Test the spirits'. Be a good Berean. Get out your Bible and filter out the nonsense of books like this that sound and look so appealing and harmless.
Quite disturbing are the Footnotes/Bibliography. Mention is made of Cindy Jacobs (false prophetess) and Dutch Sheets (false teacher) as primary sources. 'Spiritual Mapping' in the footnotes is also a troubling direction for any concerned Christian to see in their church or in an ostensibly Christian book from an ostensibly Christian publisher.
Do yourself a favor if you even think of looking at this book or its topics. Search the web under 'Strategic Level Spiritual Warfare' and see what tragic errors have been exposed and how thousands of well-meaning Christians have gotten burned by rebuking the devil, railing at demons and trespassing into areas even Michael the Archangel dared not (Jude)!
Time for believers in Jesus who really take the Name of Jesus with them to put on their spiritual thinking caps and don the armor of discernment before the devil takes them captive to the Land of Deception and Delusion.
3791092
Excellent book, provides a lot of information not discussed in churches!!
3828366
In my youth I toyed with joining Scientology. They had commendations on the walls from people high and low saying how they had "saved" them. It was a "thing" in the 1960-70's to join the group but thank goodness for libraries because after becoming suspicious of them, I did a little research and even back then, the reports were freaky about what they were up to. I know other religions have ruined people but this one has been created by a bona fide nutcase and people blindly follow into the "prison of belief." Lawrence Wright was a genius to create that term. His research was thorough, his writing interesting, and his reportage sterling. Fair, balanced and not in the crappy Fox way but real.
3498558
This book was written by the leader of the sgi organization of which I was a member. I finally left this group because I learned the hard way that it is a cult. The book in and of itself does help you understand the lotus sutra. The problem is the organization that made this book. So many lies are weaved into the wisdom and the lotus sutra that distort the truth. The sgi is very manipulative and sneaky and distorts truths to suit their agenda which is not really about world peace as it appears on surface. There is a lot more than meets the eye. I would recommend staying away from the distorted form of Shakamunis teaching and staying clear of anything that has any connection to sgi because it is dangerous. Being part of thi mind control cult severely damaged my life.
988723
Scientology is way too scary and dangerous to actually write the glowing review this book deserves.  I will cave immediately to any pressure from Scientology and will change this five star plus rating to zero if they demand it.  Like so many others, I can't afford to face the inevitable lawsuits brought by Scientology against anyone perceived to have written anything negative about the cult.

This book's integrity and Morton's bravery in writing about the many evils of Scientology and its devoted publicist, Tom Cruise, mean this book deserves a thorough review of its high quality from beginning to end.  I hope someone willing to risk retaliation from Cruise or Scientology is able to provide such a review.
1459049
Jenna writes delicately about he facts of her experiences without editorializing for most of the book to build a calm and solid foundation for what becomes an exposure of a brainwashing cult of child and adult abusers hiding under the name "church." This should be required reading for anyone thinking for a minute that Scientology is anything but vile organized crime and abuse on a massive scale.

There are other books that go into more detail about Hubbard being a total fraud. This only suggests that a couple times in reference to Jenna and her husband seeing a video or reading an article. Rather, Jenna humanizes and personalizes the depths of the institutional criminal abuse done under the name of this dangerous cult by simply reporting the constant torture inflicted on the children and their families, fact by horrible fact, letting the reader draw his or her own conclusions.

Only at the end of the book does Jenna render any opinions, and even then they are tempered.

David Miscavige and his cronies should be in prison, not in charge of the lives of thousands of mental and physical victims.

Get it. Read it. Pass it on. Discuss it.
1348004
I heard someone accuse Whitaker of "promoting Scientology."  What Whitaker does it  point out that the APA uses Scientology as a foil.  It is an error of logic: Scientology opposes psychiatry; therefore anyone who criticized psychiatry must be a Scientologist.  That's like saying, "Men eat bread; therefore anyone who eats bread is a man."  It simply does not follow logically.  But modern psychopharmacology has mastered the dangerously illogical.  Whitaker does a masterful job of exposing the danger of modern psychopharmacology and the falsehood of brain chemistry as the cause of mental illness.  He also points out what your psychiatrist, trained to pathologize and medicate but not to understand and counsel, will never tell you: that the drugs they prescribe WILL make your life much, much worse.  The American Psychiatric Association and the pharmaceutical industry are hand-in-hand in pathologizing normal life stresses and medicating us into sickness, to create life-long customers.
4486310
Perhaps, reader, you are one of those who have been bombarded with a TV and billboard campaign promoting the book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, by L. Ron Hubbard. Dianetics contains information that will bring freedom and self-fulfilment, say the ads. What the ads don't tell you is that Dianetics, a "fringe" therapy that first appeared in book form in 1950, is really a "hook" to pull people into the Church of Scientology, a powerful hydra-headed international organization that extracts money and services from its members through its control of their minds and pocketbooks. Scientology (the collective term for the teachings, techniques and network of church corporations created by the late L. Ron Hubbard) sells "mental processing" that bears little resemblance to the book Dianetics. However, Scientology, for reasons my own book makes clear, uses Dianetics to lure "raw meat" (non-Scientologists) into its thought-control machine.

The words "Dianetics" and "Scientology" are built on Greek and Latin roots and sound "scientific" and innocuous. Dianetics and Scientology are not sciences, and they are anything but innocuous. Deceptive use of the name "Dianetics" is typical of Scientology's operations. The organization has much to hide. Scientology and its other "fronts" such as Dianetics speak of freedom. But what kind of "freedom"? I am one of those who spoke out about Scientology. Agents devised a way to enter my home and photograph my papers. A piano concert I booked to play at Carnegie Recital Hall in New York City was canceled at the last moment by a man identifying himself as "Robert Kaufman." My publisher was destroyed in Great Britain by a massive campaign of theft, forgery and poison pen letters.

Scientology tried to steal my freedom of thought and speech, both when I was a member and after. That has only made me want to speak out all the more. In doing so, I have your freedom in mind also. You are about to enjoy a true science fiction adventure in "another world here on earth." Entertainment, yes. But I also wish to share with you -- perhaps with an intensity you haven't known for a while -- the preciousness, the blessedness, of our right to think and speak as we choose.

Your freedom. My freedom. Our freedom.
4180679
This is an awesome book. Everyone should read it. It is everything you need to know, that people do not want you to know.
1720098
Ron Rhodes attempts to find Biblical reasoning behind alien abductions, UFO sightings and other attractions to the paranormal. I must state
upfront that I don't believe in UFO's or life on other planets. In spite of this, I am nonetheless fascinated with controversial phenomena such as UFO sightings and alien contact. While I don't deny that people who have had these experiences felt something that they perceived to be very real, I don't believe that what they experienced had anything to do with aliens, UFO's or abductions.

The author and I come from the same skeptical background. We are also both Christians, yet I won't go so far as Rhodes does in his Biblical interpretations of alien encounters. Although he is using the Bible as his source, I found his scriptural backup for UFO sightings and alien abductions to be as weak as water. In his explanation for what causes UFO sightings, he makes the point throughout the book, warning readers about extraterrestrials:

"Christians beware! Deceptive spirits are at work!"; and:

"Don't be fooled by deceiving spirits!".

So it's evil spirits who are making all those lights in the sky, is it? I don't buy into extraterrestrial travellers visiting planet Earth either, yet I don't think the answer to all these sightings is that they are manifestations of Satan's demon angels trying to hook humans into believing in them.

I found the most interesting chapters in Alien Obsession to be "Are UFOs Mentioned in the Bible?" and "The Strange Case of Whitley Strieber". In the late eighties I read Strieber's first two books about his alleged alien abductions and visitations, Communion and Transformation. His first book, Communion, scared the living daylights out of me. I had never read a book that made me scared to move about in my own house. Strieber had repeated psychologically traumatic experiences, that, in my opinion, were not extraterrestrial in their cause. Rhodes sums up Strieber's experiences this way:

"I don't believe for a minute that Strieber came into contact with bona fide aliens from outer space. Rather, he came into contact with demonic spirits who were posing as aliens."

This is stated so brazenly that it is laughable. The whole tone of this book, in its Biblical analyses and in the author's warnings to vulnerable potential Christian alien abductees, comes across as though it was written by --and I am sorry that a fellow Christian such as myself has to say this-- a religious wacko. How else to explain the author's tips to Christians who may find themselves abducted by demonics spirits posing as aliens? Rhodes gives the reader tips on how to get these demonic aliens to let you go. What? Has he used his own advice on himself to vouch that it works? Not a fun read, and I found myself shaking my head with scoffing laughter many times as I turned its 252 pages.
3655588
Amazing story of a sociopath who founded a bogus religious cult, and destroyed lives in the process. Amazing that Scientology still lives as a tax exempt religious entity.