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---
title: "Understanding Scientology — us-16"
source: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/wakefield/us-16.html
retrieved: 2026-06-28
---
Understanding Scientology, by Margery
Wakefield
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Conclusion
## Coming Out of Scientology: The Nightmare Ends, The Nightmare
Begins
For weeks after I left I would suddenly feel spacy and hear
the cult leader saying, "You'll always come back. You are one with us.
You can never separate." I'd forget where I was. I got so frightened
once that I slapped my face to make it stop.
-- ex-cult member, quoted in Prison or
Paradise
The last time I ever witnessed a movement that had these
qualifications: (1) a totally monolithic movement with a single point of
view and a single authoritarian head; (2) replete with fanatical
followers who are prepared and programmed to do anything their master
says; (3) supplied by absolutely unlimited funds; (4) with a hatred of
everyone on the outside; (5) with suspicion of parents, against their
parents -- the last movement that had those qualifications was the Nazi
youth movement, and I'll tell you, I'm scared.
-- Rabbi Maurice Davis, Youth, Brainwashing and the
Extremist Cults
For me, by far the most difficult part of my Scientology experience
was in leaving the cult. Being a Scientologist was not always easy --
the work was hard, the hours long, and the pay almost nonexistent. For
the most part we had to be satisfied with the intangible rewards of
knowing we were helping to rescue the planet and save mankind.
There were some good things about being a Scientologist. One has the
pleasure of working with a group of similarly committed friends toward a
goal which seems at the time to be worthwhile. There is always plenty to
do, and one has the satisfaction of working hard and completing
challenging tasks. Because of the communal lifestyle, there are always
people to be with and to talk to. In Scientology, as in many cults, it
is hard to be lonely.
I worked over a twelve year period at many different jobs in the
organization. I traveled up the "Grade Chart" through the various
Scientology Levels and completed three of the secret "upper levels," or
"OT levels," to a point where I was supposed to have regained some of my
magical, long lost "OT abilities," such as the ability to travel outside
my body at will and the ability to be "at cause" over physical objects.
My personal demise within Scientology came at the exact point that I
began to utter the one thing a good Scientologist must never say -- a
simple three-word phrase that is guaranteed to get one excommunicated
from Scientology: "It doesn't work."
I was at the Fort Harrison Hotel in Clearwater, Florida,
Scientology's "mecca of technical perfection" where celebrities and the
well-to-do from home and abroad casually write out
hundred thousand dollar checks as they pursue the elusive promises of
"the Tech."
My auditing, paid for by a sixteen thousand dollar inheritance from
my grandmother, was not going well. Nothing was happening. Where were
the magical "gains" I had been promised?
I had become a problem, a liability, to the organization. I was
complaining a bit too publicly. The emperor had no clothes, but as long
as no one said so, the game could go on. I was trying to spoil all the
fun.
For several weeks I was confined to a room on the second floor of
the hotel. Meals were brought to my room. One evening I was told to
pack. The next morning I was escorted to the airport in Tampa where I
was told to pick any place out of the state of Florida, and to go there.
I was being given a one-way ticket.
I was in shock. I knew what this meant. I was being "offloaded"
(Scientology's form of exile). I was no longer welcome in Scientology,
which had been my world for twelve years.
I flew back to Wisconsin, where my parents were living. My father
met me at the airport. Soon I was sitting in the living room of my
parents' home, staring at the snow drifting outside the window, trying
to assemble my fractured sense of reality into some kind of coherent and
workable mental order.
For the first week, all I could do was work a huge jigsaw puzzle of
Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany. Slowly fitting the pieces together
seemed to correspond to an internal process taking place in my mind. I
was still unable to think.
I noticed that when my father turned on the television, there were
periods of time when I would stare at the screen, yet the words of the
announcer were in a foreign language. I knew that was strange, because
my father was understanding it just fine.
My relationship to reality was tenuous for a long time. I had
periods of "floating" when I experienced a strange feeling of being
disconnected from everything around me, and felt blissfully apart from
it all.
The bliss was short-lived. Feelings of terror soon emerged as I
began to deal with my predicament. I had been exiled from Scientology
and would probably be declared "SP" (Suppressive Person), a death
sentence not just for this short lifetime, but for trillions of years to