[4] The Sea Org maintains strict codes for its members, beginning with a billion-year pledge of service to Scientology upon initiation.

[1]: 139  Some ex-members and scholars have described the Sea Org as a totalitarian organization marked by intensive surveillance and lack of freedom.

The Sea Org exists as a spiritual commitment that is factually beyond the full understanding of the [Internal Revenue] Service or any other but a trained and audited Scientologist.The Sea Org was established on August 12, 1967, by L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Dianetics and Scientology, initially on board three ships, the Avon River, the Enchanter, and HMS Royal Scotsman.

[8] It moved to land-based organizations in 1975, though maritime customs persist, with many members wearing naval-style uniforms and addressing both male and female officers as "sir".

[9] In 1985, the church purchased a 440-foot (130 m) motor vessel, the Freewinds, which docks in Curaçao in the southern Caribbean and is used as a religious retreat and training center, staffed entirely by Sea Org members.

[10] Sea Org members make a lifetime commitment to Scientology by signing a billion-year contract officially described as a symbolic pledge.

[13] According to Hubbard, much of the galaxy, including Earth (known as "Teegeeack"), was ruled tens of millions of years ago by the Galactic Confederacy.

[3]: 124  Urban also describes the Sea Org, with the naval uniforms and ranks, as an idealized re-creation of Hubbard's own World War II military career.

He also states that the Sea Org is reminiscent of the "Soldiers of Light" in Hubbard's science fiction story collection Ole Doc Methuselah.

[3]: 125 Academic Stephen A. Kent has argued that at least part of the reason for the establishment of the Sea Org was that the Church of Scientology's practices encountered resistance from the American Food and Drug Administration and the Internal Revenue Service, as well as from the governments of the United Kingdom, Australia, and Rhodesia.

[7]: 53  Most Sea Org members reside in church complexes in Los Angeles, Clearwater, Copenhagen, London, Saint Hill, and Sydney, with some at smaller centers or on assignment elsewhere.

A recruit graduates the EPF as soon as all the required courses have been completed and upon successfully undergoing a mandatory "7A Security Check" and approval by a "Fitness Board",[26] they are then allowed to join the Sea Org as full members.

In 1975, the church sold the Sea Org's ships and moved the organization to land bases around the world, which as of 2003, were operating in Clearwater, Copenhagen, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Saint Hill Manor in the UK, and Sydney, with smaller offices in Budapest, Johannesburg, Madrid, Milan, Moscow, and Toronto.

[3]: 125  The church contends that the agreement is not a legally binding contract and is merely a symbolic demonstration of the dedication members are expected to give to the organization, and that they are free to leave if they wish.

[7]: 65  Former Scientologist Jon Atack argued, in A Piece of Blue Sky (1990), that treatment of Sea Org members in the RPF was a "careful imitation of techniques long-used by the military to obtain unquestioning obedience and immediate compliance to orders, or more simply to break men's spirits ..."[16]: 206  One former member, Gerry Armstrong, said that during his time in the Sea Org in the 1970s he spent over two years banished to the RPF as a punishment: It was essentially a prison to which crew who were considered nonproducers, security risks, or just wanted to leave the Sea Org, were assigned.

Discipline was harsh and bizarre, with running laps of the ship assigned for the slightest infraction like failing to address a senior with "Sir".

[34] Lawrence Wright wrote in The New Yorker in 2011 that the Sea Org used small children drawn from Scientology families for what the article described as forced child labor.

The article described extremely inhumane conditions, with children spending years in the Sea Org, sequestered from mainstream life.