Declaration of LW
I, LW, do hereby declare and state:
1. I am over 18 years of age and a resident of the State of California. I am a staff member with the Church of Scientology International.
2. I have been a member of the Church of Scientology's Sea Organization for 25 years. In 1994, I was given the opportunity to do the RPF program and it made a great difference in my life. The program was a turning point for me. I wanted to share some of the many positive things I experienced.
3. I grew up in New York. My parents were both very educated people who were also involved in the arts, my father being the chairman of the English department in a large New York high school.
4. Although I had a childhood full of many experiences such as travel to other countries to study literature theater and the arts, I knew there was something missing in my life. When I was in college and graduate school I experimented with drugs to try to fill that void.
5. This was the greatest mistake I ever made. The effects of drugs nearly ruined my life. I got involved in Scientology in 1970 after reading Dianetics The Modern Science of Mental Health in hopes that this technology could handle some of the lasting ill effects of the psychedelic drugs I had taken.
6. After studying only a few courses. I decided I wanted to spend my time helping others with Scientology and Dianetics. I joined staff in December 1970, and the Sea Organization in 1973.
7. I had tremendous results from the technology, but I knew that there was still something unhandled, stemming from the two year period in college and graduate school when I used drugs. I am speaking here not of the physical damage that resulted from taking drugs, but long-term spiritual effects which had continued to hamper me throughout my life.
8. In 1984 when I was told I needed to do the RPF I knew it was true. I had the opportunity to contest this but I looked it over and decided this was the opportunity I really needed to make the changes in my life that I had to make.
9. I have had a very strong purpose to help others. I was tired of being ineffective.
10. The RPF for me was a coming of age.
11. I learned how to deliver spiritual counseling to others and this put me in a position of being able to help another being.
12. I teamed up on the RPF with another Sea Organization member who had been a Church executive for many years but who, by his own admission, had reached what he described to me as "bottom".
13. When we first started working together on the program he had the attitude that "if this worked that would be fine and he'd be willing to try, but if it did not, he would leave." We made the pact that we would help one another and started auditing each other every day.
14. The changes I saw in him, which I helped him accomplish, were among the most significant contributions I have made in my life. Through doing this program he regained the level of personal honesty and ethics be had once had and all the pride and competence that goes with that.
15. After completing the RPF he became. once again. a very trusted executive in the international management of Scientology. When I see how much he bas contributed to the expansion of our church in the last 10 years, it is personally gratifying to know that if it were not for what I did to help him, this would not have happened.
16. We do not see each other often, but when we do, we both look back on those years as some of the best we've ever experienced. Our friendship is one of the most important ones either of us has ever had.
17. No small part of the gains I had were breaking through my insular viewpoint on the world around me and learning skills I would never otherwise have become involved with. I learned how to build frames and foundations of houses, how to do a "concrete pour", how to paint a building, how to use a sewing machine and make tapestries, how to cut and install tiles, how to put stucco on the facade of a building and on and on. What I gained from all of this was pride in my own ability and the certainty that things happened because you cause them to happen - something I had missed in liberal arts upbringing.
18. Because of this, I had a breakthrough on my ability to think for myself. When you can see the fruits of your own labor. both in building something and in counseling someone who then can visibly do better in life, you no longer have to listen to what someone else thinks is true. You can see it and decide for yourself.
19. One thing that is special about the RPF is that you are there to fully resolve problems in life you have otherwise been unable to deal with. All your attention is on getting your partner better, and improve yourself and there are no distractions to doing this. These are things one doesn't really have time or attention for when is in the thick of things on one's job.
20. One thing I've read from apostates about the RPF is that you are forced to do things and you do not have rights.
21. I've seen this written by a fellow, named Andre Taboyoyan and I found it very amusing. Andre was running the RPF when I was on it, and I can see why he might have thought this. Andre was himself pretty anti-social, and he would get into fights with people, and from my point of view he tried very hard to make the RPF an unpleasant and oppressive experience for those of us where on it. But that wasn't the RPF. That was Andre.
22. Fortunately, the way the program is supervised, it became obvious to other Church executives that something was amiss and they investigated the matter. They discovered that L. Ron Hubbard's policies regarding how the RPF program was to be run were being violated and corrected the situation. Not surprisingly, Andre later left the Church.
23. Despite having to briefly contend with Andre we still had tremendous gains. During the time I was on the RPF I gained so many friends - people from all over the world whom I still have very close ties with.
24. I found that doing the program strengthened my relationship with my family because I was able to understand them and myself so much better than I could before. My father died while I was on the RPF. and I was so grateful that I had the opportunity to do this program before that happened because I discovered, in my counseling, what had caused a rift between us, and I was able to reconcile with him before losing him.
25. Since completing the RPF I have turned my life around. I am so much happier and more productive than I was before doing it.
26. I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to do the program. I would have no reservations in telling a friend or loved one to do it. In fact I have had the occasion to help some of my friends decide whether to do the RPF or not. In every case, I have urged them to do so and they have all thanked me for my help.
I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the United States of America that the foregoing is true and correct.
Executed this 10th day of February 1998 at Los Angeles, California.
LW
Declaration of KB
I, KB, hereby declare and state:
1. I did the full Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF) program of the Church of Scientology's Sea Organization in 1983.
2. No one forced me to do this program. It was offered to me as something I could choose to do and I chose to do it.
3. I was on the program for over a year and accomplished all the objectives I had for myself. I caught up with my studies of our religious scriptures, I greatly expanded my understanding of religion in general and my own spiritual nature in particular, and I greatly increased by understanding of and appreciation for my fellow man.
4. I also gained friends for a lifetime and learned skills that I always wanted to learn which also lasted me for a lifetime (engineering, carpentry, running a construction crew, etc.).
5. An unexpected benefit, but a very welcome one, was that I finally found more time for my family. I had been traveling from one place to another for a long time, dealing with different legal matters in different countries and there had not been much time for my two girls who were growing up rapidly. My time on the RPF was a welcome break for them and for me as it meant I finally stayed in town for a whole year which meant more time with the kids and they appreciate it to this day.
6. When I grew up, I spent a good part of my high school years in a Catholic boarding school (run as part of a monastery). Catholic education was, of course, one of the top priorities and before starting the RPF program I thought the routine would be similar to what I had experienced in my school years. It was similar as far as the time available for religious study was concerned, but for the rest it was not. The friendship and team spirit I experienced in the RPF was unlike anything I had experienced in other groups (and there have been quite a few of which I have been a member).
7. It was on the RPF that I learned religious counseling procedures, based on the scriptures of our founder Mr. Hubbard, which enabled me to help my fellow staff members. One of the cornerstones of the program is to learn to help others with any of their life problems. In fact, it is a key test to determine if someone has honestly and successfully completed the program, whether he really did help his fellow to become more able to deal with life situations. None of the religious programs I had participated in before, Christian and otherwise, had put so much stress on this aspect. And it is this area, taking full responsibility for another person, where I have seen my friends experiencing more gains than on any other part of the program.
I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the United States of America that the foregoing is true and correct.
Executed this 10th day of February 1998 at Los Angeles
KB