Declaration of Independence

Tony & Marie-Joe DePhillips
a.k.a. “Alex Metheny” & “Freetothink”

Preamble:

We have always loved the writings of L Ron Hubbard. One of my favorite LRH statements is from the lecture Differences Between Scientology & Other Philosophies: “ If it is true for you, it’s true. And if it’s not true for you, it still isn’t true. Not even if Ron told you is it true. It’s just not true, that’s all.“ ~ LRH

In addition to this as a foundation, the ARC triangle, the granting of beingness, the code of honor and not needing a license to survive, are just a few of the building blocks we’ve used to improve our lives. We have had many great wins in Scientology and know many well intentioned staff and public Scientologists.

How we got here:

Our personal story of shock, disbelief and declare will be added as an attachment for those who are interested. You will be able to see how we went from among the top opinion leaders and contributors in our area to SPs, in just a few months.

After reading The Truth Rundown and Geir Isene’s Doubt formula we were deeply troubled about what was going on in the church. These stories were believable to us because they aligned with many of our own observations and experiences. After trying to communicate about the things that were troubling us in the church, we started to get attacked as ourselves being the problem – for speaking out with any disagreement or questioning. It became very apparent that we did not have the right to say what we were observing in regards to our own church or its management. It also became very clear that we did not have the right to associate with people who the church had deemed were “BAD”. Evidently, we were supposed to give up the right to decide who we would or wouldn’t associate with. To us, these are fundamental rights of an American, fought and died for by many!

I have never been good at being bossed around. Some might think it’s a “button” (problem or character blemish) that I haven’t dealt with yet but, on the other hand, maybe it’s an ability that’s helped me retain my self-determinism and freedom of thought. We quickly realized that we had been PTS to the Church for many years, and applied handle or disconnect. When each attempt to handle was met with bigger and stronger messages to cease, desist, and “get handled” (including a Non-Enturbulation Order and ethics interviews), we decided to disconnect by officially resigning from the Church. Our resignation letter to the church pretty much sums it up:

We have both been in Scientology for over twenty years. We have contributed about xxxK to the Ideal Org and over xxK to the IAS. We have spent in the neighborhood of xxxK on services from the Church and donated a decent amount of time participating as volunteers.

We have had some great wins.

Over the last few years however we have noticed more and more things that we do not like about how the church operates. Heavy ethics, make wrong, heavy regging etc. We have made attempts at correcting these things with reports with no result.

We have seen and heard of too many abuses, human rights violations, misuse of resources [people, money,…], and worst of all, too many LRH policies being violated. We can’t, in good conscience, continue to participate and support the church as it is being managed at this time.

After making our own observations and hearing the stories of Marty Rathbun, Geir Isene, Mike Rinder, Amy Scobee, Jeff Hawkins, Mary-Jo Leavitt and many more Sea Org members, OT’s and highly trained auditors, we have made our decision.

We have always been told that these people on the internet were crazy SP’s. After hearing their stories we were not able to come to that conclusion. We were shocked to realize that many who had been painted to us as evil and suppressive were in fact whistleblowers trying to expose the abuses and violations.

We both have experienced excessive sec-checking and heavy ethics even when our contributions (money and time participating) were showing that we were stellar members of the public.

We love Scientology when it is applied with ARC and not with enforcement to get everyone to conform.

We came into Scientology to find our own self determinism and to have gains. Progressively over the years we feel that we have been forced overtly or covertly to “toe the line”, or follow “command intention”, without being able to use our own judgment or our own ethics. If you do not do what is “expected”, you are shunned/punished in various ways. When you assert your own independent thought and it doesn’t align with command intention you are quickly shown you are not a good group member.

In conclusion, we no longer feel confident in this Church’s ability to operate in a manner that we can be proud of and disseminate to others.

We hope that the Church of Scientology will get it’s ethics in and make the changes necessary for it to be a church we can once again be proud of.

Sincerely,

Tony DePhillips Marie-Joe DePhillips

We heard the church lie about its not having a policy of enforcing disconnection – We’d already received many reports of our friends being told not to talk to us.

As someone once said “If they lie about this, what else will they lie about?”

Our conlusions:

After exhaustive research and communicating, we decided that the abuses did occur and that they were and are extensive and widespread. We also saw that the church was actively involved in creating their own enemies and seemed to take very little responsibility in remedying their wrongs. Furthermore, we wondered what kind of a leader would allow these things to continue to go unhandled and in fact seemingly encourage such activity.

We got into Scientology to become more at cause in life and to do better in life based on our own realities. We still feel that this is what LRH intended. We didn’t, and still don’t, believe or agree with everything that LRH ever uttered. But as he himself said, we don’t have to.

We believe that the church is being run in a fashion that, to us, is destructive overall, as well as destructive to our personal goals of being at cause over our own lives. The Grade Chart states that on OT 7 you will be cause over life. That may be possible, but not if the church refuses to let you be at cause over your own church!!

Also, first and foremost to us is the abuse of the Sea Org members. This to us is obscene. These people dedicate their lives to Scientology only to be treated as sub-humans. And when fed up with that treatment and wanting to leave, they are treated in an abhorrent fashion. These people are some of our best and brightest. This cannot stand. What gives DM the right to run roughshod over these people? Who anointed him to be above the law? The out-points are too many to be listed here, we’re sure you all have examples of your own.

We believe that everyone who stands up and throws off their shackles will make it that much easier for others to do so. That has been true for us. The others coming out before us have made it more real for us to take our stand.

We could not live with the idea that we were too scared or bullied into having to hide our god given rights to be here and communicate. Especially when it is the right thing to do!

So we hereby declare ourselves Independent Scientologists.

Independent: One who is independent in thinking, action, etc.

That is how we see ourselves. We do enjoy the Scientology philosophy by LRH, when we are practicing it as independent people, not having it forced down our throats.

Final thoughts:

We also very much appreciate LRH’s views on infinity valued logic. The idea of two-valued logic such as right-wrong, good-bad is too simplistic. The idea that any man or woman is infallible or perfect is not realistic. All men and women have good and bad in them, it is just a matter of degree. And the fact that we feel Mankind is basically good means that there can be salvation for all and no person has a monopoly on that. DM is not totally bad or totally good just like the rest of us. He is not above the law or above the Scientology justice system. DM IS NOT SCIENTOLOGY. We believe that it is the greatest good for the greatest number of dynamics that DM step down from his position as leader and that steps are taken to reform the church of Scientology so it reflects the values of this current culture and promotes ARC, tolerance and the values usually associated with spiritual goals. We have finally answered this question for ourselves: Does the end justify the means? For us the answer is NO!! Or another way of looking at it is: The means are the end. Scientology was supposed to give us a way of setting an example as good and honorable people. That is an end in itself. The way Scientology has been treating its own people is a disgrace and a degrade of Scientology, and has to be rejected.

Thanks for listening. Thank you all for what you are doing and will do in the future.

Much Love,

Tony DePhillips ("Alex Metheny”), Mid OTVII, Prov. Class IV Pre-GAT and Fully Hatted Ethics Officer

Marie-Joe DePhillips (“Freetothink"), OT V,KTL/LOC, Level G SHSBC