[God] sees your good and evil thoughts and actions but they do not matter to him.

[The Maharishi's] plan goes like this: He will build 3,000 "Peace Palaces" around the world, including one somewhere near Washington. In each palace, hundreds of his followers will be engaged full time in "yogic flying" -- an advanced version of Transcendental Meditation in which the meditators sort of hop around the room while sitting cross-legged. This practice, he says, sends out powerful positive vibrations that reduce stress, crime and violence. With hundreds of people doing yogic flying in 3,000 different places, peace will break out all over.

Last fall, after the events of Sept. 11, the maharishi announced that if some government gave him a billion dollars, he would end terrorism and create peace by hiring 40,000 yogic fliers to start hopping full time. No government took him up on the offer, which clearly irks him.

"I'm not going to waste my time convincing governments," he said yesterday. "I'm going to create these groups that will create coherency in every country."

When government money failed to materialize, the maharishi decided to fund his project through bonds issued by the Global Country of World Peace, which he founded last year as a virtual nation without any actual land.

To those who don't know me, I was in Scientology for about 21 years. Until Jesse Prince stepped forward, I was the highest-ranking Scientology executive to speak about the organization without its approval. I served in and saw virtually every echelon of the organization, from a franchise where I started in 1969 to working directly with David Miscavige. About 18 of those years was spent in or senior to Dept. 20 (now called the Office the Special Affairs or OSA), the section that deals with the ''enemies'' of the organization, which comes to mean anyone who disagrees with or criticizes any aspect of Scientology, Hubbard or ''management.'' Thus it is Dept. 20 (and now also RTC) that deals with the media, the courts, government agencies, critics and ARS itself.
(...)

... on the religiosity of Scientology, I testified about my own role in creating the ''religious image'' that ranged from the programs that Dept. 20 had back in the early 70s (during the FDA trial) to do everything possible to make Scientology appear to be a religion, e.g., get crosses up, find a room and create a chapel, start ''Sunday Services,'' get the org listed in the phone book under ''churches'' etc.

I also testified how I had obtained ''religious recognition'' for Scientology from the Labor and State Departments. (More on this in a moment.)

When it came to offering my opinion, I said that I don't consider Scientology to be a ''religion'' because it wasn't being conducted as such in good faith. [...more...]