A Billion Years: My Escape from a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology

Product Information

Rinder goes on to elaborate on “the wall” around Scientologists, his personal story of 45 years in the cult, and his eventual escape from crazy-town. I won’t spoil the book by telling all his stories, but things get more weird, and more overtly abusive, than you can probably imagine. Very, very Lord of the Flies. I’ve witnessed him do this time and again (in the A&E series and on the podcast), and I… ugh… I just love him for it. Rinder wrote this memoir for his two children who are still entrenched in Scientology, in the hopes they’ll someday read it and begin to question. He carefully recounts for them, and us, his story of being brought into the cult by his parents at a young age, being groomed for cult leadership, and ultimately being crushed to discover the whole thing is a lie. creation I'll break down one critical section of the book, covering events I am intimately familiar with. In this section, Rinder attempts to fill a gigantic hole in the official anti-Scientology narrative. It might be the wildest fiction he has ever attempted on the subject. The hole in question was created by my widely-disseminated recitation of the facts leading up to Scientology's tax exemption recognition. I have described before the fraud perpetuated by Rinder, and promoted by Larry Wright and Alex Gibney, on that subject. You can find the numerous references on my YouTube channel (e.g., IRS, Fraudulent Deceptions ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usd4Y...), IRS, Wright fact inventions and joining sides A Billion Years is an extraordinarily powerful book. It is an essential account from the inside, and while it’s a devastating exposé of the abuses of the church, the tone is measured and deeply humanistic. Rinder lets us feel what it’s like to fall into a state of blind faith, and how hard it is to break free and see the truth for what it is. Nothing could be more relevant to our current moment.”

You could never predict whether you would be in or out with Misavige. I think this was deliberate. It was a tactic famously used by Stalin - keep your subordinates divided, fearful, confused, and off-balance. No cabal to overthrow the king can form if no one at court is certain of their position. One minute I was digging ditches and the next I was heading up external affairs for all of scientology." (p. 147) For some it changed lives positively, and others had to plan escapes and were traumatized, terrorized, by the organisation's own highly weaponized private army. 'Never give up, never give in' is their driving force to save people from themselves. Rinder’s] voice is crisp, urgent, and vividly impassioned, whether assessing his years as a compliant member, his breathless escape, or his promise to continue exposing Scientology as a ‘unique and vengeful monster.’ An intensely personal, cathartic memoir of blind allegiance, betrayal, and liberation.”Mike has a unique perspective on Scientology. He not only grew up in the “church” but rose to its highest ranks, working directly with self-appointed leader David Miscavige, Tom Cruise, and in his early years as a teen, founder L Ron Hubbard himself. There’s something so unique about Mike Rinder: an empathy that doesn’t just “feel” for people, but that deftly pinpoints the source of another’s pain and swiftly responds with a skillful word or deed to kiss the hurt, and make it better. Incredible. I listened to the audiobook and Mike did such a good job with the narration here. I've listened to quite a few books where the authors did their own narration, and it's not always great. It's really an ideal way to do an audiobook though if you've got the skill for it. negotiations and historically in-depth IRS audits that culminated in tax exemption. Even with my detailed descriptions over the past several years publicly available, Rinder's new fiction betrays a remarkable degree of ignorance about Scientology's history vis a vis the IRS.

Edit to add: If you had any question as to whether the harassment, obsession, trailing of ex-members, "Fair game" type nonsense of Scientology was true, you can simply look at the number of accounts that magically appeared to give this book (and any other book about Scientology) a bad rating before it was even published. It is their life's work to protect the secrets of their cult, y'all.* If you go into this book with zero prior knowledge about Scientology, I believe it would be difficult to truly understand the magnitude of the information and follow along with all the jargon. Rinder does provide a glossary of terms which is helpful, but I would highly recommend either watching the aftermath series that he and Leah Remini did on A&E first, or spend some time on Aaron Smith Levin's YouTube channel. The very first information I got on Scientology was reading Leah remini's Troublemaker book a few years ago and I also would recommend that as a good place to start.Penned with clarity, style, and immense vulnerability, this engaging memoir absolutely deserves a place at the top of the list of Scientology survival stories. There are even more religious mantras based on the writings of Madame Blavatsky, who was a Russian mystic and author, a co-founder of the Theosophical Society in 1875. She gained an international following as the leading theoretician of Theosophy. Her theories were plagiarized big time and even taken over and adjusted by Eugenics. At what point, if ever, did she influence Hubbard in establishing his non-Christian Church? There are rumors to the effect though.

remini/), with plenty of citation to detail. What Billion Years made clear is that Mike is not an amnesiac after all. Instead, he is an inveterate liar. Memory loss is merely his justification for his continually making it up as he goes along. Victimhood and hero status both thoroughly rely and victories, the prosecution of hundreds of Freedom of Information act lawsuits to uncover what the government was hiding about unlawful operations and discriminatory treatment against Scientology, the lawful investigation of IRS abuses, and least of all the nearly two years of Rhodesia may seem a strange choice, but Hubbard had his reasons. First and foremost, he believed he had been British imperialist Cecil Rhodes (after whom the country was named) in a previous life, and he was going to return to claim his rightful kingdom. (Hubbard did not announce this past life to those outside his inner circle, likely because Rhodes was a racist and often seen as the father of apartheid.) He also believed that the new government there, which had recently broken ties with Britain, would be sympathetic to his own problems with the establishment. There was a sign against a fence in the Russian labor camps, which, paraphrased, declared something like 'We will force you into happiness'. Scientology had/still have their own labor camps, managed by the Rehabilitation Project Force(RPF). Rinder travelled with the IRS negotiation team to D.C. on perhaps 2 or 3 occasions over that two-year span as a board member of Church of Scientology International (CSI). CSI was always required to participate in each meeting. Heber Jentzsch was the primary CSI participant, but could not attend on a couple occasions and so Rinder subbed from the bench. He never contributed a constructive thing to any meeting. I was at every meeting - which by conservative estimate numbered several dozen. I was in fact in charge of organizing the substantial data compilation evolutions required after each IRS meeting. I recall routinely dealing with the heads of Church litigation, corporate affairs, accountancy, finance, data, management and investigations throughout that period in the accomplishment of that task. And those folks sent me the tomes of information required. I never recall Rinder lifting a single pinky to help during that entire two-year period. He certainly was nowhere to be found during the investigative (with the exception of his colossal Armstrong failure), public relations, and litigation (involving literally thousands of lawsuits) efforts that for nearly a decade lead up to the negotiations and audits between 1991 and 1993.One of those things that I had to think about was the news a while ago that Nicole Kidman was not allowed to attend her children's wedding. The way Rinder explains that Scientology always comes first and that family and compassion are coming so far second that it's almost non-existing, it made a lot clear about that dynamic and how heartbreaking it must have been for Kidman. It also opens up a whole different light about Tom Cruise and other well known people who did or did not manage to get out of Scientology.

Hubbard noted in one of his policy letters that the hardest thing to see is that which is omitted, and this sums up the official scientology 'biography' of Hubbard." (p. 138) Quote from the book: There's no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you're proud of. If you find that you're not, I hope you have the courage to start all over again. ~SOMETIMES ATTRIBUTED TO F. SCOTT FITSGERALD.

I don't know where I heard about this book by Mike Rinder. It might have been a podcast about secret societies, or a magazine about it, but I immediately wanted to read it. Eventually I discovered it as an audio book and put it on top of my list. Somehow Scientology has always been an interesting topic, mostly because of what you hear about it through modern media, where it's talked about in relevance to actors and celebrities who are involved in this. Having an ex scientology member who used to be in a higher rank talk about his experience seemed extremely interesting, and man, I wasn't wrong. Mike Rinder opens up a book full of stories that are so mindblowing that some of them are even very hard to believe. Yet, having read and seen stuff in the past, I also couldn't not believe his story. Few people understand Scientology like Mike Rinder does. In A Billion Years, he tells the gripping, harrowing account of growing up in Scientology, serving founder L. Ron Hubbard, and rising to the top of its ranks. Mike has found purpose in his pain and his book offers not only a cautionary tale but also an inspiring story of resilience.” Next, fifteen years after leaving Scientology Rinder suddenly emerges now as the cause of Scientology's tax exemption. He was mum on the subject for fifteen years - rightly deferring to me on that subject - precisely because he had little to nothing to do with the dozens of court struggles Our most basic instinct to belong and to be accepted is our biggest weakness in the end. Our desire to connect convinces us that we will improve or enlighten ourselves. Or at least receive support and acceptance. There's nostalgia and remorse in Mike Rinder's case. And heartbreak.