Drew Renner:  

After I graduated from PHS, I got a job working for the library -- driving the bookmobile. It was fun. And memorable...I was on a stop near UCR when John F. Kennedy was shot in November of 1962. About 1963-4, I quit and moved to Los Angeles to become a top auditor in the Scientology movement which was just getting started then. I don't know how many of you remember Guy Eltringham, the smartest kid in school, but he and his mother introduced me to Scient-ology. It took a while but I soon saw its many merits and signed up for some courses at their HQ in L.A. I took them and passed with flying colors. This made me a top auditor (councilor) there for about another year. About a year later (1965), I was kicked out of Scientology as a PTS, a potential trouble source. Because I was. Actually, I was more than potential; I was actively a trouble source and proud of it. That was soon after they decided to become a religion, a move I was totally opposed to. I was then and I remain a very non-religious person, and Scientology was never a religion. It is only a religion today because they claim that it is (primarily for tax purposes in my opinion). And how do you gainsay that? Actually, this is how. In its original version Scientology never asked anyone or told anyone that you had to "believe" in them. They always said to not believe but find out for yourself. As far as I know that still should be the case. But once you've got people "believing" in you and your words, they become easier to control. All you need to do is threaten them with some vague form of punishment or retribution and the true believers will follow your orders. Being kicked out was an enormously freeing experience, because I was torn about what to do about this religion problem, for me, a deeply concerning problem, both personally and profes-sionally. I remember Tom and other friends of mine who decided to stay and buy into the "new" Scientology as a religion, saying to me how much they would miss me since I had decided "to move on." I responded that it was not I who had shifted my position, it was they and Scientology who were leaving, and that I was in the same position I always had been vis a vis Scientology. Because auditing/coucilling was the only thing I knew how to do well, I went with several others who had been kicked out for similar reasons to Orange County to found a new and better form of scientological practice. We did. We called our new nonprofit organization The Institute of Ability based on the assumption (note I did not say "belief"), that people, the human spirit, fundamentally, was ability. This was followed by another assuption: that there were three abilities that were fundamental -- the ability to be, the ability to do and the ability to have. Our next assum...Expand for more