Gier Isene: "Nineteen eighty four - My way into Scientology’s inner secrets – and out again"

Book release - Gier Isene: "Nineteen eighty four. My way into Scientology’s inner secrets – and out again."
http://isene.me/2013/09/01/1984/

Awesome book cover! Anyone know the ISBN?

Geir faps to anonymous

ISBN 9788282820592

Geir Isene on Scientology -- full video

http://www.forum.exscn.net/showthread.php?33158-Book-release-quot-1984-quot-by-Geir-Isene

http://www.forum.exscn.net/showthre...-by-Geir-Isene&p=848180&viewfull=1#post848180

http://www.forum.exscn.net/showthre...-by-Geir-Isene&p=848194&viewfull=1#post848194

available as e-book - I got one

http://www.forum.exscn.net/showthre...t-1984-quot-by-Geir-Isene&p=848514#post848514

This was a better watch than I expected. He comes off as way less haughty and arrogant than he does in writing. Funny and likable, even. Still, he gives off an air of having very strong opinions, and I suspect they were no less strong in the other direction when he was in the cult. So I dunno, I get a little suspect of people who seem a little too certain that they have things all figured out.

Good for him and his book, though. I hope the CoS tries to sue him (or his publisher or whoever) for spilling "copyrighted religious secrets" and we get another mini-circus to enjoy.

I've always liked Geir.
He is a thinker, and a funny and honest one at that.

(His girlfriend's blog discussing PTSD was also very insightful and smart.)

Btw, the OP didn't spell his first name correctly. It is Geir.
thx.

Afraid I don't much care for Geir, for much the same reasons as you, SS.

I do find him too certain of everything, a bit haughty. For someone who got scammed for all that money, I wonder how he could have managed to retain that hauteur once out.

He still doesn't understand that it was all a scam from the get-go, and thinks Hubbard was some kind of genius. He says the same about Miscavige, even -- though that just might be intended ironically. I think he has a way to go before I could find what he has to say of much interest.

In Norway? That will be a short one.

Apparently you haven't kept up with his blog and opinion. He is speaking out and that is helpful which many people find interesting, especially the cult.

he is in this video somewhwere:

He called Miscavige a "creative genius" and clarified what he meant: he admires DM's ability to squeeze so much additional mileage out of the bald tires of the cult now that the "Source" is forever silenced. Objectively, it's a good point. Not just anybody could have flogged the dead carcass this far. It takes a total lack of conscience, ruthless determination, and loads of Scotch.

Recorded on 5/12/09, so it's not like he's woken up further in the intervening 4 years or anything....

Right.

You don't get around much do you ? I am diagnosed with Asperger. What's your exuse ?

It's frustrating to see someone like Geir, who seems to have intelligence on IT topics, be so stupid and still cling to woo, even though it is murky woo right now. Over the last 4 years (until just recently) he used "OT8" before his name and seemed to cling to that identity. He does come off as haughty for someone who got suckered into a huge con, and calling Miscavige a creative genius is a huge error. He obviously knows very little about marketing, and since when do marketing geniuses get called that for a product with a sales trajectory like an avalanche (downward, obviously)?

This would be like labeling the guy who tried to market "New Coke" in the 80s as a marketing genius. If Miscavige were an actual genius, he would pull in really smart and seasoned people to re-make the product, add to it, repackage it without using dumb reasons like too many semi-colons, and then sell honestly and not by holding guns to people's heads.

As long as Karen keeps that too large car for her size with her "I (heart) LRH" that I've seen around town many times, I will always question her motives.

He gets to define himself however he wants to.

also, karen needs to tell her husboingfriend to get a haircut.
these pictures hurt my eyes. who even finds them?

^^ Nice.

I don't give a shit how he defines himself. But using all of your Scientology credentials every time you post something illustrates his attachment to those creds and that he identifies by them....(god, please don't let this thread turn into more Karen spamrolling in large, tacky font).

You're way behind, me thinks, sport.

Who does that (identifying himself by his clam credentials)? Geir? I haven't been following his blog at all, so I'm asking innocently.

Even after March 2013? http://isene.me/2013/03/26/fuck-it/

Geir's views has been in development since he came out. Judging Geri of late 2013 based on what he said 2 or 3 years ago is a bit retarded. It's not entirely unlike how the cult cited the first rounds of prank calls and Agent Pubeit for years when describing Channology as terrorists and hackers. Jensting posted the dox above, have a look at it.

I happen to know the guy from back then. Geir can come across as a bit stuffy, but it's more a matter of communicating in a foreign language (even though he speaks English quite well he had to learn it at school, it will never flow as evenly as in a native) and him being nerd-smart rather than street smart to begin with.

My Book Review (quoting with full attribution permitted and encouraged):

http://www.humanistforlag.no/index.php?ID=Bok&ID2=174

Geir Isene's "Nineteen eighty four - My way into Scientology’s inner secrets – and out again" charts his journey into the criminal organisation known as the "church" of $cientology, re-tracing his childhood along the way and wrapping up with a post-script defining himself as no kind of $cientologist after having been out for four years.

I have to declare an interest in doing this review, as I am a long-time critic of the Co$ and have never been in. I reckon that there are people for whom the language barrier is insurmountable - happily I can read Norwegian well enough to give a review (even if I have to admit that there might be an adjective or two I missed; this was not word cleared in any way shape or form), and I'm fluent in $cientologeese.

Summary:

Geir grew up happy, well looked after, curious and fiercely intelligent. By the time he was 18 he had fixed on ambitions in astrophysics after having had good long looks at the natural sciences, partly by gatecrashing Oslo university. Geir's curiousity lead him to accept an invitation to watch the introduction film in the, to him unknown, local $cientology "org." In relatively short order he was taking courses and getting tremendous personal gains. Basically, basic $cientology communication exercises made it possible for him to put aside a huge shyness and talk to girls (and more). From this new lack of inhibitions he built a career running an independent radio (about - and itself a - role playing game) which was a success. Some things had to give, he had to put a lot of time into being a staff member and he didn't complete his university studies, but he was not only getting a lot out of various communication techniques, he also wanted to help save the planet and this turned out to be a $cientology speciality. Or so they said.

Apart from an early flirtation with being on staff at the Oslo org, Geir was mainly active as a public $cientologist getting a senior position in the WISE company U-MAN selling personality tests as the basis for recruitment consultancy. He decided to stop fooling around and settle down, and shortly thereafter met a woman through his job and they ended up married with two children, she joining the Co$ at the start of their relationship.

Geir's path inside the $cientology machine was smooth, apart from a slight slow-down as he worked off significant debts he built up paying in advance. He managed to get all the way to OT8, in spite of the first "Golden Age of Technology." Although he found the incessant "security checks" aggravating, he did not have a hard time with them.

It's important to highlight that Geir continued to experience improvements in his well-being as a result of doing $cientology. At the same time, he neither expected nor achieved reliable supernatural abilities / experiences. He right away decided that the space opera aspects of OT3 were not the crucial thing and the fact that he felt better after completing the course was what he wanted out of it.

The tone in the $cientology organisation hardened about the same time as Geir attested OT7 and OT8. He found himself the centre of attention from the internbational leadership as a fundraising leader at the same time as the "ideal Org" programme ramped up. Optimistic is not the word to describe the expectations from those in the organisation who felt they could make demands of him (since, as an OT8, he could do ANYTHING), and he was shocked to hear that an early idea for obtaining a wildly expensive building was for Geir to phone a property owner and simply talk that owner into donating the building. Simple as that!

Not only were the demands on Geir insane, the pressure to raise money was insane. Donation events where the dors were kept locked until the fundraising target was achieved made a lasting impression (but not enough to make Geir leave). One of the few - but no less heartfelt - regrets in the book is that Geir let himself be used to convince others to donate vast sums for projects / services which definitely were not worth it.

Geir was one of the few OTs who knew more about computers than what LRH had told them, so he got to try to guide OSA through the politics of interacting with the Internet, with Wikipedia and with the EFF. In parallel with this activity, he was asked to volunteer for OSA to find out what was the extent and vialibity of criticism of the Co$ in Norway. As luck would have it, Norway had an established and very vital website - operation clambake - whose leader was able to withstand Geir's not very elegant cloak and dagger infiltration attempt.

David "he is NOT insane!" Miscavige is encountered personally on the Freewinds at an OT8 promotopnal event very shortly after Geir attested that level. DM had decided that Geir was the new ED for Oslo org and Geir was so surprised that he hardly managed to point blank refuse. Geir maintained the refusal, with no particular ill effects, but noted that DM was hardly practitising the standard technology he preached when he proposed a radical reorganisation so suddenly. The doubts instilled during this meeting came to the fore later as Geir found out about the allegations of a culture of violence surrounding and perpetrated by DM.

While Geir had not experimented with outside religions much during his early phase as a $cientologist, he met members of a new Hindu religious movement, "The All World Gayatri Pariwar." He travelled to India, and lectured to a select group about $cientology, about the Hubbard view of reincarnation and about auditing. Geit was interested in the large numbers of scientists in this religion, and the fact that within much the same time span as the Co$ they have managed to grow a lot bigger. He also noted that the atmosphere was different from that in the Co$.

Geir's path to $cientology criticism started with being asked to find out exactly what was available on the Internet in terms of the OT levels. As an OT, he could go to places on the Internet where the less highly trained OSA staffers could not. Later, the summer of 2007, Geir was told that some US jourmalists were looking around for stories of David "he is NOT insane!" Miscavige being violent. Geir dutifully found a few stories from earlier reports, but nothing current about Norwegian journalists being on this story. Geir wasn't done, but spent several hours a night, summer 2007 - summer 209 surfing the web to find out more information. From his earlier personal introduction to heavy ethics (being yelled at and spat on by Sea Ogres), he did not find the accusations incredible. Rather the contrary. Finding out about Marty Rathbun's defection and reading "the Truth Rundown" tipped him into actively finding out more and seeking out ex-members and critics. None of these activities were known about by the Co$ where Geir continued, if less enthusiastically then before.

Geir and his wife made a joint decision to leave the Co$, Geir published his Doubt Formula n the Internet and the rest is the story about how Geir went from paying freezoner to enthusiast to the point where he describes himself as no kind of $cientolgist at all.

My opinion:

Geir's passage through the Co$ was a lot less conflicted than that of most people who write books about it. What makes it interesting is partly the fact that very few OT8s have written about the experience, partly that Geir is very open about the fact that he had an easy time but at the same time that he was not exposed to all the really bad abuses in the Sea Org etc. His book does not accuse the Co$ of great crimes against his person, but notes many evil acts that stem from the fact that Hubbard defined a cult, not a religion (KSW and disconnection are repeatedly referred to as instrument and practise of a cult and as having been put in place as such by Hubbard).

I can only bemoan the fact that Geir did take the bait at a time where he was susceptible and that no-one around him were able to point out the whole story about the Co$. I knew people who shared his traits of brilliance and curiousity when I was a student (even if I was not one of them), and I like those people.

Geir's book echoes with his initial uncritical acceptance of Hubbard's teachings. He states himself that he doesn't like reading a book from a critical angle because he then forces himself on the book. Well, I do disagree with some of the enthusiasm expressed - at the end in the chapter about what could be kept and what should definitely be thrown out from Hubbard's teachings. As I come from a teaching family I can only agree that looking up words in a dictionary is not all there is to reading a book. What irritates me is that while Geir duly notes that understanding of meaning is curiously absent from Hubbard's method, Geir does not make the full mental leap to describing "study tech" as a "thought stopping" technique designed to remove all desire to understand Hubbard's writings in any way other than the one true way - KSW all the way. Other ex-members have gone into detail about how "Study Tech," "Ethics" and KSW are not accidental pollutions of an otherwise pure fount of wisdom, but the very essence of a cult. Likewise, while Geir attributes early exteriorisation experiences to Hubbard being right, he curiously does not go into the possibility of the effect actually being a hypnotic state, induced purposefully by Hubbard (nor into the very simple procedures for finding out that there is, in fact, no such thing as a demonstrable experience of "exteriorisation with full perception" - or so says the Randi foundation and its million dollars).

In conclusion, this book will resonate with many members and ex-members of the Co$. Geir writes in a direct and unaffected way, if he does not scale the heights reached n Jeff Hawkins' book. Perhaps the message to take away is that this book describes how the cult-like mechanisms baked into Hubbard's teachings - KSW and friends - did finally manage to drive away a devoted follower who had been fully content with the actual $cientology.

I do not know the exact timeline, but all throughout his Indie phase he identified himself as OT8 on his posts. That stopped when he announced that he was no longer an indie.

I think that Geir is still in recovery mode and gradually shedding his cult identity, however he still seems to put some stock in LRH and his "teachings" without fully realizing that it was all aimed to be mind control.

I agree that your statement "using all of your Scientology credentials every time you post something" was a breath from the past. Oddly enough, you failed to point that out. That's the kind of attention to detail I appreciate on WWP. </sarcasm>

Sarcasm aside.....I did mention this in post #22 above, "Over the last 4 years (until just recently) he used "OT8" before his name and seemed to cling to that identity." I suppose that I should have been more specific about the meaning of "until just recently", but if anyone takes the time to read his posts and stories on other blogs they will get the details, if desired.

Not true. Unless you can show up the dox, you are full of bs.

From what I've read, Geir does seem like a good guy at heart but still a bit of a mess. His wife seems to be doing better and as such should be a big help to him. The mindfuck runs deep and getting past it can take a long time. Facing the fact that there are no OT's, no Clears, no "high level" executives (it's a cult FFS ), isn't easy when these notions have formed the core of a persons identity for decades.

The important thing is that they've managed to get out, and have helped others to do the same, in their own way. As with the RinderBuns and others, I look forward to the day when they finally feel comfortable enough in their own skin to shut down their blogs and just move on with their lives, the cult has taken up enough of their time already. Until then, while I'm sure that the airing of their "profound revelations" is providing some badly needed and long overdue therapy, in a general sense, it's all pretty much the same tired old load of horseshit from the readers perspective.