Freedom<\/em>\u00a0magazine had referred to Marty Rathbun having a blog. So I went to the Internet, finally,\u201d he says. A loyal (if often complaining) member of Scientology for more than 30 years, Lemberger had never explored the \u2018Net to see what people were saying about his church \u2014 and he knew nothing about the crisis it was in. But now he absorbed as much he could stand. \u201cI found out that the world has changed,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBesides the controversies, he also realized that there was a burgeoning independence movement that takes several different forms in Europe and the US. And these groups are using the same materials as the official church, but without the layers of control and constant demands for large donations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cEverything now is on the Internet. All the Bridge, all the training Bridge, the auditing Bridge. There\u2019s no more monopoly,\u201d Lemberger says. He was stunned to realize that L. Ron Hubbard\u2019s entire \u201cBridge to Total Freedom\u201d is now available to anyone with a computer and Internet access. Dani said he came to the realization that his entire mission could continue to honor Hubbard\u2019s ideas, but break away from the church itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMy people in the mission know Tami, they know me. All of our staff are well paid. All of our customers get great service. I manage it my way,\u201d he says. \u201cI took my staff together and told them about Debbie Cook. I encouraged them all to do their own research.\u201d He even cited a Hubbard policy to justify their research project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAs the church says, \u2018Think for yourself’,\u201d his wife Tami adds. So the people at his mission began reading stories about Scientology on the Internet. \u201cEveryone came to the same conclusion \u2014 the church is fucked. The orgs are useless. Miscavige is a lunatic,\u201d Dani says. \u201cWe decided we wanted to leave the church.\u201d The Lembergers own the mission, and under a franchise license send ten percent of their income to the church. In a letter, Lemberger notified David Miscavige that they now consider themselves independent from the church and will no longer be sending money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last month, the Lembergers flew to south Texas to meet with Marty Rathbun, formerly the second-highest ranking official in the church, who now is the most visible member of the independence movement\u00a0because of his blog, which is harshly critical of Miscavige.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt is unprecedented, as far as I can recall\u2026 no mission, certainly no group of this size and productivity, has told management to shove off,\u201d Rathbun says. The only thing like it he can remember was some mission holders refusing to sign new charters in the early 1980s. But there\u2019s never been a mission that simply defected because of its problems with how the church itself is being run. Rathbun calls it a tectonic shift in the world of Scientology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But he also wanted the Lembergers to understand that they shouldn\u2019t go looking for anyone else to be their new leader. \u201cI really tried to emphasize that independents have got to get over the idea that they need a leader or any type of management. They were sort of looking for me to supervise or direct them,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After a week with Rathbun, they then flew to Tampa to visit other independents in the area. But when they arrived and went to pick up their luggage, a woman approached them. \u201cShe asked, \u2018Are you Dani Lemberger?\u2019 I said yes, and she handed us two envelopes,\u201d Lemberger says. Inside were letters from the church notifying Dani and Tami that they have been declared suppressive persons. They said they could only come to one conclusion: church operatives had spotted them visiting Rathbun, which today is considered grounds for immediate excommunication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dani is still surprised not only that Rathbun\u2019s house was under surveillance, but he wonders how the church was able to get his flight information. \u201cI inform anyone wishing to visit that they must assume their visit is being recorded from a distance,\u201d Rathbun says. \u201cI told Dani and Tami that, but I think they only half believed me until they were served with suppressive person declares at baggage claim,\u201d he says. When they got home, however, the Lembergers found that church letters were the least of their worries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One Million Years B.C.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Sitting in the food court of Newark Liberty International Airport\u2019s terminal B, Dani Lemberger\u2019s face was flush, the hair on his arms was standing up, his eyes were getting a bit misty. \u201cYou\u2019re being a good auditor right now,\u201d he told me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He had been telling me about his early years in Scientology, when he and his wife Tami, then newlyweds, took up the practice in San Francisco in 1980. As he described his \u201cwins\u201d while auditing, he explained the church\u2019s counseling techniques in vivid detail. I was fascinated, and I just listened and took notes. \u201cAuditing? No one has ever told me that before,\u201d I said. \u201cWell, you\u2019re listening. You\u2019re paying attention. That\u2019s what an auditor does.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lemberger was born in Haifa in 1952. He spent some time in London, got a bachelor\u2019s degree in economics and statistics at Haifa University, and an MBA at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, near Paris. After spending some time working as a business executive in Tel Aviv, he met Tami and they were married in 1979. They decided to take a year off and travel before having kids, and that\u2019s how they ended up in San Francisco, trying Scientology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI had been into self-improvement, into spiritual, mental stuff for years,\u201d he says. \u201cI did psychoanalysis, yoga, meditation. I read zen, Alan Watts, Carlos Castaneda. Each one, it quickly came to a plateau, and then there was no place to go farther.\u201d He was still looking for something that would hold his interest when he started courses at the SF mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But in Scientology, he right away started having \u201cmajor wins,\u201d and was soon \u201cgoing exterior\u201d \u2014 having out-of-body experiences through Scientology auditing. \u201cYou could ask any questions. And there was an answer to any question from the writings of Ron Hubbard,\u201d he says. And he wants to make sure that I don\u2019t think he\u2019s a credulous man: \u201cI was never about to believe anything. Scientology is not a belief. There was never a demand to believe anything \u2014 this is key.\u201d \u201cWe have no god. We have David Miscavige,\u201d he says, and then grins. \u201cI\u2019m kidding.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Through his early coursework, he was rapidly discovering his true nature. \u201cYou come easily to the awareness of yourself as a spirit, not a body. Nobody before Hubbard made it so simple, so easy to grasp,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s natural law. It\u2019s true.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For a year and a half, he says, he and Tami trained to be auditors in San Francisco. \u201cThat\u2019s when I cognited that this is the way. The answer to mankind\u2019s quest for an understanding of life,\u201d he says. \u201cTami and I decided to dedicate our lives to clearing the planet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Lembergers were fully on board. But Dani says he couldn\u2019t help being worried about something: \u201cWhat happens to Scientology when Ron Hubbard dies?\u201d It was 1981, Hubbard had turned 70 years old, and since the 1977 FBI raid on church offices in Los Angeles and DC (which would bring prison sentences for 11 church operatives \u2014 including Hubbard\u2019s wife, Mary Sue), Hubbard had made himself scarce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI had the audacity to write Hubbard a letter \u2014 what happens to Scientology after you die?\u201d Dani says he received a response, but it was a generic-sounding letter, saying that the church had good management in place. It had a stamp of Hubbard\u2019s signature. \u201cI shrugged and put it away,\u201d Dani says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile, his Scientology coursework was going straight up and vertical. While on his second session of New Era Dianetics, he made a huge leap forward. \u201cI went whole track,\u201d he says. And he explains that he wasn\u2019t supposed to do that so early in his career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He had already accepted the idea that he was an immortal being \u2014 called a \u201cthetan\u201d \u2014 and that he had lived countless times while inhabiting numerous bodies, lifetime after lifetime. But now, through auditing, he suddenly got a vision of deep time \u2014 his existence over his \u201cwhole track\u201d of existence. \u201cI was seeing experiences I had undergone millions of years ago,\u201d he says. \u201cI accepted it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Scientologists believe that problems in their lives are the result of experiences that might have happened to them eons ago. Only Hubbard\u2019s auditing, they believe, can get them back to those experiences to \u201chandle\u201d them so they no longer produce problems in the present time. \u201cIt works with 100 percent true scientific accuracy,\u201d he says. And in the meantime, it was just a hell of a good time at the mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt was a year and a half of great experiences, full of people having fun. Tons of laughs. Fun drills. And you saw yourself by the hour having wins and gains,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd all along I questioned and argued because I\u2019m a skeptic by nature.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1981, the Lembergers returned to Israel and began doing further Scientology coursework at the org in Tel Aviv.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Five years later, on January 24, 1986, L. Ron Hubbard died. After three days, thousands of Scientologists were called to the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles to receive the word that Hubbard had discarded his body so he could continue his research on another plane of existence. The announcement was videotaped for Scientologists in other parts of the world. \u201cI saw it two or three times. I felt uneasy. I was in shock. Sad. They made too much effort to make it seem a joyful event,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Six months later, Dani had moved to New Jersey for an executive job, and he traveled to Scientology\u2019s \u201cadvanced org\u201d in Los Angeles in 1998 and attested to \u201cclear.\u201d After eight years of coursework and auditing, he had finally cleared away the last of his \u201creactive mind\u201d \u2014 the place where, Hubbard believed, we store up the traumas of our lives (in \u201cengrams\u201d) so that it keeps us from seeing our true nature. Having spent that time clearing away his engrams, he had no more reactive mind of his own, and was ready to proceed to even higher levels as an \u201coperating thetan.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1989, he made his first trip to \u201cFlag,\u201d Scientology\u2019s spiritual mecca in Clearwater, Florida. Over the next couple of years, he saw people like Debbie Cook, who had become \u201cCaptain FSO\u201d of Flag, running the huge operation where Operating Thetan levels one to seven are delivered. And that\u2019s when, Dani says, he started noticing the distance between top executives like Cook and ordinary \u201cpublics\u201d like himself. There was a gulf between them that he didn\u2019t think was a good reflection on management. But in general, he was thrilled to be doing his OT levels at Flag. In 1991, he reached the most legendary level of all \u2014 OT III.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all on the Internet,\u201d he says, knowing that now much of the public is aware of the bizarre story about Xenu the galactic overlord which Hubbard wrote in 1967 while running Scientology from the yacht\u00a0Apollo<\/em>. \u201cOT levels have two parts. First, there\u2019s the course. It consists of whole track stories. I won\u2019t repeat it. But I won\u2019t deny what you already know,\u201d he says. \u201cSome of it is handwritten. It\u2019s science fiction. It\u2019s a tale. You want to believe it, believe it. It\u2019s of no importance. It\u2019s a fable. Legend.\u201d More important than the space opera tale, he says, is the second part of the process \u2014 drilling the story through exercises with the e-meter. \u201cThe results come from the drill, not from the story,\u201d he explains. (This auditing is done solo, with the subject using an e-meter to quiz himself. In a 2006 price list smuggled to the Internet, OT III on its own carried a price of $8,800, discounted to $7,040 for IAS lifetime members.)<\/p>\n\n\n\nReminding me that a Clear has no reactive mind of his own, Dani tells me that when you experience \u201ccharge\u201d at the OT levels, it comes not from your own reactive mind but from a being nearby. \u201cSome of the charge can be very close, or a distant charged area that\u2019s far away and connected to you invisibly,\u201d he says. \u201cDuring my second session on OT III, I had an experience of a massive blow of charge that was distant. Maybe 100 yards away. When the charge blew my body started shaking, and I started crying. It\u2019s something that follows you wherever you go. What was it? Where did it come from? The needle on the e-meter was going back and forth, exactly as Hubbard said it would. It was quite mind-blowing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On levels OT IV and higher, Scientologists learn that they are infested with thousands of\u00a0other<\/em>\u00a0thetans \u2014 known as \u201cbody thetans,\u201d each with their own reactive minds and carrying their own charge from experiences millions of years in the past. Over the next several years \u2014 while purchasing 12.5-hour \u201cintensives\u201d of auditing for tens of thousands of dollars per level \u2014 they work to rid themselves of these \u201cbt\u2019s.\u201d Critics call it a form of science-fiction exorcism, and point out that while Scientologists are paying such huge amounts, there always seem to be more body thetans for them to clear away. By 1991, Dani had finished OT VI and was started on OT VII, the highest level he could complete at Flag. (OT VIII, Scientology\u2019s highest level, is only delivered on the church\u2019s private cruise ship, the\u00a0Freewinds<\/em>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\nAbout that time, he and Tami returned to Israel, and began thinking of opening their own mission in Haifa at the urging of Tami\u2019s father, who had also taken Scientology courses. He owned a nail and wire factory, which had some adjacent property. It was perfect for a center of their own. In 1992, they opened the Dror Center. And then Dani started breaking rules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lost in Translation<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere were no Hebrew materials then. So I started translating Hubbard into Hebrew. You weren\u2019t supposed to do it, but I did it anyway,\u201d he says. Dani translated Hubbard\u2019s book, \u201cLearning How to Learn,\u201d and printed 1000 copies of the book, in full color. \u201cThe first copy off the press, I put into an envelope and mailed it to COB. \u2018Dear Sir, I did this,\u2019 I wrote.\u201d Lemberger mailed it off to David Miscavige, who, as Chairman of the Board of the Religious Technology Center, Scientology\u2019s controlling entity, is known as \u201cCOB.\u201d On August 17, 1994, Miscavige mailed Dani a letter, commending him for producing the book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He was also commended by Scientology\u2019s president, Heber Jentzsch, for the way he helped quash an investigation of the church by Israel\u2019s Knesset. If management was pleased with Lemberger, Lemberger was increasingly becoming frustrated with management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Each summer, Dani was traveling to Flag to continue work on OT VII, which he had been stuck on for years. But what concerned him more than his own case was the state of the organization. \u201cI could see very clearly that the orgs, the missions, the groups, the field auditors \u2014 they were obviously managed incorrectly. They were doing things totally backward,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He found that in 1965, Hubbard had written a policy explaining that top-heavy, top-down management was what stifled growth. \u201cI was worried that it was what was happening in Scientology. It was too top-heavy, with no middle management. It was destroying the orgs because the executive directors can\u2019t do anything.\u201d In 1993, he started writing letters to Miscavige, explaining his concerns. “The orgs are not doing well,” I told him. And you\u2019re not supposed to say that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Personally, things were good for Dani. \u201cLife was good. The factory, my wife, our kids. I was having good wins on OT VII. But one thing that was bugging me \u2014 my ruin, as we say in Scientology \u2014 is that the organization is not doing well. It was shrinking and it was mismanaged. I was remembering how much better it was in San Francisco.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the years went by, he complained more and more to auditors and other officials. \u201cMy language got worse over the years,\u201d he says. The officials at Flag responded by putting him through intense \u201csec checking\u201d \u2014 interrogations intended to get a subject to admit to transgressions. He went through hundreds of hours of sec checking, he says. It wasn\u2019t fun. But he did enjoy another part of the program they designed to handle his attitude \u2014 the False Purpose Rundown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt was a tailor-made FPRD program they designed for me. They believed that if I was always complaining about Miscavige\u2019s mistakes, I must have mistakes of my own on my whole track. So we handled it on all my overts and withholds [moral transgressions and lies to cover them up]. We turned up all the goofs, errors, and misdeeds I made as an executive or leader,\u201d he says. \u201cFor the past millions of years, I\u2019ve always been a leader or an executive.\u201d And along the way, he\u2019s made mistakes, resulting in the people he led rising up against him. \u201cI was guillotined repeatedly over my whole track. That happened to me many times over the past million years.\u201d Lemberger insists that he found the program useful. \u201cIt was terrific. I loved it. That\u2019s why I didn\u2019t mind paying the tens of thousands.\u201d However, after years of the FPRD program and intense sec checking, his original problem remained. \u201cI still thought Miscavige was a lunatic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In January 2005, his case supervisors gave up and took him off OT VII. Since then, he\u2019s had very little auditing at all. But he\u2019s not in a rush to get back on the Bridge. \u201cAs long as Miscavige is COB, I\u2019m not getting back on the level,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While his case stalled, his mission thrived. Tami was named best auditor on the planet in 2000 and 2002. Customers and income flowed through the center steadily. They moved \u201cpre-clears\u201d up the Bridge and on to the Tel Aviv org and to Flag. And all along the way, Dani carped and complained about what a lousy job Miscavige was doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then, on January 2 of this year, one of Dror\u2019s auditors, Aviv Bershadsky, brought Dani a copy of Debbie Cook\u2019s e-mail. \u201cAviv said, \u2018I\u2019m sorry. All these years I thought you were a nut. Now Debbie is saying everything you\u2019ve been saying for ten years.\u2019 I wrote Debbie Cook an e-mail. I told her, I agree with most of what you have written. But you\u2019re 15 years too late.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Drug Dealers and Psychos<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
After we\u2019d talked for nearly four hours, Dani, now joined by Tami, had to dash to get to their plane to Israel on Tuesday night. When they got home, they learned that they\u2019d been targeted by a classic Scientology smear campaign. \u201cThe church is now putting out information that we are drug dealers, that we\u2019ve gone psychotic, that we are controlled by Marty Rathbun,\u201d he says. \u201cThey\u2019re showing friends an SP declare with horrendous lies, but they never show it to us, so we can\u2019t defend ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The \u201cfair game\u201d campaign has managed to convince about ten members of their mission to abandon them. But the rest \u2014 about 40 auditors, staff, and public \u2014 are sticking with them, Dani says. \u201cThey\u2019ll all get their declares, one by one, we know,\u201d Dani says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After getting to know Dani Lemberger, the sharp business executive, spiritual seeker, ardent believer in L. Ron Hubbard\u2019s expansive vision of the cosmos, cantankerous but loyal organization man \u2014 in other words, just about the Platonic ideal of a deep-rooted Scientologist \u2014 it\u2019s shocking to think that he\u2019s taking an entire mission away from Miscavige\u2019s church.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ten years ago, in January 2012, a process began that would lead to Dror Center departing the Church of Scientology. On June 28, 2012, Tami and Dani Lemberger were handed a letter notifying them that they had been declared ‘Suppressive Persons.’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_wp_convertkit_post_meta":{"form":"-1","landing_page":"0","tag":"0","restrict_content":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leaving-church","category-making-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scnil.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scnil.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scnil.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scnil.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scnil.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22444"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/scnil.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22473,"href":"https:\/\/scnil.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22444\/revisions\/22473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scnil.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scnil.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scnil.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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