Matt Willis’s life inside Scientology and how he was convinced by ‘fairground trick’
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Matt Willis spoke our recently about how he had been fully invested in Scientology for three months. The Busted star is back on our screens tonight with his wife Emma as they host a new Channel 4 documentary looking at how smartphones are affecting children.
Swiped: The School that Banned Phones sees the couple, who have been married for 16 years, go into a school to get a class to ditch their phones for 21 days after being concerned by the impact of technology on their own children. Matt, 41, and Emma, 48, have faced tough times in their long-lasting marriage, with Matt openly discussing how Big Brother star Emma gave him an ultimatum during his struggles with cocaine and alcohol addiction and his deep involvement with Scientology.
The singer previously confessed that he was so engrossed in the Church that he nearly left his wife on their advice. Matt first got involved with Scientology shortly after he left rehab and was approached by a stranger in London.
Drawn to the promise of a drug-free life, spiritual guidance and a new social circle, he accepted an invitation to visit their headquarters and quickly became immersed.
He told The Sun earlier this year: “I was fresh out of rehab, a bit lost in the world. I was walking down Tottenham Court Road and I got approached by a guy who asked me a few simple questions.
“Before I knew it, the next week I arrived at the doors to the Scientology building. Every single day I went there. I bought different books and did different courses. I was in.”
The star explained how he was fooled and really invested after undergoing a Scientology process called ‘auditing’ which seeks to ‘locate areas of spiritual distress’ using an ‘E-meter’ that detects ‘harmful energy’ in the body. Matt said he was instructed to hold onto some metal while being asked questions.
He said: “I was an idiot who got hoodwinked by some guy with a fairground trick.”
He revealed he thought his marriage was at risk, adding: “They were like, ‘There’s someone in your life who’s actually draining you, who’s a negative force, and it’s normally the person closest to you’. And it’s like, ‘I think they’re trying to split my marriage up now’.
“They were trying to force this weird opinion on me. When I look back at it, I was like, ‘Are you trying to separate me from everybody else?'”
Matt said that a massive argument with one of the members was the final straw. Speaking on Matt Richardson’s podcast When No One’s Watching, he confessed that he only discarded his Scientology bible two years ago.
“I was like, ‘I’m going to f****** read that one day’. I tried to. It is f****** enormous and really boring. I got about eight pages in. It doesn’t make any sense,” he admitted. The practice of Scientology was created by American author L. Ron Hubbard in 1952. It aims to help followers develop a profound understanding of their spiritual nature and its relationship to all living things and the universe.
In 2013, Britain’s Supreme Court declared that Scientology was a religion and legal weddings could be held in its chapels. However, some countries have refused to recognise it as a religion.
Content retrieved from: https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/showbiz-tv/matt-williss-life-inside-scientology-30561847.
