> >Religion Inc. - Stewart Lamont [Plaintext version 1.1, May 20, 1999] RELIGION INC. The Church of Scientology Stewart Lamont The story of Scientology reads like the plot of a bizarre and sensational movie. A science-fiction writer founds a religion, makes millions of dollars in the process and then becomes a recluse. His followers, who dress in naval-style uniforms, engage in a cops and robbers game with the FBI and the American Inland Revenue Service which leads to Watergate style burglaries and multi-million dollar lawsuits for and against the cult. Smear campaigns are conducted against its enemies and accusations of brain-washing are levelled against the church by psychiatrists. A breakaway movement leads to purges and the break-up of families and hundreds of members are declared 'Suppressive Persons'. Then a young lieutenant of the cult leader takes over amid accusations that he has forged the documents which give him power over the cult's millions. The locations for this 'movie' are a former mansion of a maharaja in deepest Sussex, an ocean-going yacht where punishments akin to keel-hauling are ordered by the cult leader for those who disobey his whim; a sleepy Florida town which is taken over by the church; and sumptuous Los Angeles properties where movie celebrities are lionized by the cult. Behind it all is the guru, described by his estranged son as a sadist, a debauched devotee to occultism, and yet seen by his followers as a genius who discovered a religion that combines the ancient mysteries of the East with Western technology and psychotherapy. He is denounced by judges as a 'charlatan' and in 1980 he disappears with lawsuits pending against him and accusations by his followers that they are being persecuted for their religion. Incredible as this scenario is, it is the true story of Scientology and its founder Lafayette Ron Hubbard. Previous books have dealt with the early years of the cult, now Stewart Lamont gives the first full account of its controversial history in recent years, drawing on interviews with principal participants in the drama. He reveals the top-secret upper levels of the cult's teachings and discusses the allegations that Ron Hubbard possibly died several years before the 'official' announcement in 1986. This is the book of the movie that has already happened, but has yet to be made... RELIGION INC. The Church of Scientology '...falsehood must become exposed by truth - and truth, though fought, always in the end prevails.' L. RON HUBBARD, _My Philosophy, 1965_ RELIGION INC. The Church of Scientology Stewart Lamont HARRAP LONDON First published in Great Britain 1986 by HARRAP Ltd 19-23 Ludgate Hill, London EC4M 7PD Copyright (c) *Stewart Lamont* 1986 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior permission of Harrap Limited. ISBN O 245-54334-1 Printed and bound in Great Britain Contents Acknowledgements 9 Prologue 11 1 L. Ron Hubbard: Guru, God or Demon? 18 2 A Religious Technology 30 3 Life on the Ocean Wave 53 4 God's Admiralty 67 5 Gamekeepers and Poachers 89 6 Mindbenders and Faithbreakers: Scientology and Psychiatry 114 7 Cops and Robbers: Scientology and the Law 134 8 Battlefield Earth 153 Epilogue 163 Appendices 169 Glossary 184 Index 188 Illustrations *Unless otherwise stated, the photographs listed below are from the author's own collection* *Between pages 64 and 65* L. Ron Hubbard (*Frank Spencer Pictures*) Saint Hill Manor, Sussex London Scientology HQ in Tottenham Court Road Candacraig House, Scotland Robin Scott and family Municipal Buildings, Clearwater Author with an E-Meter Confidential folders in 'Flag HQ' Frank McCall with model of *Apollo* Frank McCall with ship's wheel Ron Hubbard and film crew (*Nik Wheeler/Sunday Times, London*) Hubbard on location (*Nik Wheeler/Sunday Times, London*) *Between pages 128 and 129* Los Angeles Scientology HQ Mrs Shirley Young and Mrs Susan Jones Dr. John G. Clark Michael Flynn David Mayo (*Nik Wheeler/Sunday Times, London*) Finance Police (*Nik Wheeler/Sunday Times, London*) A security guard (*Nik Wheeler/Sunday Times, London*) Golden Era Studios at Gilman Springs Heber Jentzsch at Golden Era Studios Aerial view of the clipper-ship at Gilman (*Nik Wheeler/Sunday Times, London*) The swimming-pool and clipper-ship at Gilman Author on board the clipper-ship TV documentary picture of Hubbard in 1973 (*Sunday Times, London*) Acknowledgements It may seem bizarre in the light of the conclusions at which this book arrives, that some of the people I have to thank most for help, information and co-operation in writing it, are officers of the Church of Scientology. My gratitude is nonetheless sincere and although I know that I may be accused of biting the hand that fed me, I should make it clear that it was my purpose to hear all shades of opinion both for and against Scientology with an open mind. After collecting and studying the evidence by interview, from documents and published material, the fact that I felt compelled to make adverse comments upon L. Ron Hubbard and his religion is, I believe, a reflection upon the content of that evidence rather than upon any bias or capricious ingratitude upon my part. I hope it does not sound too patronizing to say that I hope that many of the friendly people within the Church of Scientology (and there are many unaware of the true nature and practices of their church) may one day come to a similar decision when they view the evidence away from the glow of uncritical commitment. In particular, I would like to thank Mike Garside, the Director of Public Affairs of Scientology in the UK, who, along with his team at Saint Hill in East Grinstead, supplied me with material and allowed me access to Scientology organizations; Rich Haworth, then Director of Public Affairs at Flag HQ in Clearwater, Florida when I visited there in September 1984; Mrs Shirley Young and Mrs Susan Jones, who were my chaperons in Los Angeles; Mr Marshall Goldblatt for generous hospitality, and Rev Heber Jentzsch, President of the Church of Scientology International. Among the disaffected Scientologists and 'independents' I would particularly like to thank are: John Atack of East Grinstead; Robin Scott and his wife Adrienne at Candacraig, Strathdon; John 9 RELIGION INC. McMaster; Neville Chamberlain; 'Alyson'; and Gulliver Smithers. From the opponents of Scientology I would like to single out the Clark family: Dr John Clark MD of Harvard Medical School, his wife Eleanor and daughter Cathy; Dr Michael Langone of the American Family Foundation; and Boston attorney, Michael Flynn. Other sources of material and assistance were the Editor of the *Sunday Times*, Andrew Neil, and Julian Browne of the Colour Magazine; Kevin Holland of Reader's Digest; Sarah Hogge for permission to use her study undertaken within the Religious Studies Department at Lancaster University; Peter Clarke of the Centre for New Religious Movements at King's College, London; Professor Roy Wallis and Dr Steve Bruce of the Department of Sociology at Queen's University, Belfast. Last, but most of all, I would like to thank my friend and agent, Andrew Hewson; and Simon Scott, Editorial Director of Harrap, for encouragement, advice and in the journalistic cliche, for 'doing the biz'. STEWART LAMONT 10 Prologue IT WASN'T a bad substitute for paradise: the rolling hills, the manicured landscape gardens, stitched into a lush patchwork by the long, straight, freshly painted white fences. The scrub which is a common feature of the hills south of Creston in Southern California had been meticulously cleared from the 160 acre ranch, designed originally for horse training. The quarter-mile track was still there, plus a grandstand painted white and an observation tower. Wild life abounded and in the hothouse corn stalks grew alongside orchids. The tri-level ranch house sat atop a hill overlooking a lake. A satellite dish and pool were perched beneath a patio and sun porch. The lord of this manor might have been forgiven for thinking he had found heaven on earth. As the winter sun reached its highest point on Monday, 27 January 1986, two station-wagons turned slowly out of the ranch gates and drove up Donovan Road making for the port of San Luis Obispo, which lay a few miles away on the coast. There a boat was waiting to help the occupants perform their macabre and secret task. In the front seat of the lead car were two lawyers: Earle Cooley and John Peterson. Cooley was a tall man of vast bulk who had weighed in on the side of the Church of Scientology in several court cases before becoming one of its most influential members. He had once spent a few hours cooling off in the cells for contempt of court when he had defended his clients too zealously. The previous Friday he had dashed the hundred and fifty miles north from Los Angeles as soon as he had heard the news. He had spent the weekend with his assistant, John Peterson, who was driving the station-wagon, seeing that everything went exactly to plan. There had been no autopsy on the deceased. But the sheriff of San Luis Obispo County and the coroner had been 11 RELIGION INC. satisfied with the death certificates and the fingerprints and blood samples with which they had been furnished. They had managed to arrange a swift cremation that morning for the body. With the ashes scarcely cool, Cooley and Peterson and others were on their way to perform one final task before returning to Los Angeles to announce their secret to the world that very evening. The small silver urn Cooley held between his knees contained the remains of a giant among men - the man he admired above anybody else who had lived. Behind Cooley and Peterson sat a large man with greying hair, his tinted glasses concealing soft and tearful eyes. Heber Jentzsch was an emotional man. A man with a big heart. As well as his personal grief was his regret that he had never met the man whose remains occupied the urn, yet in the eyes of the world Jentzsch was the man who represented the deceased when he disappeared six years previously. Beside Jentzsch sat his wife Karen, a dark-skinned woman who had known their dead leader. Gossip had it that she had been a night-club hostess before Scientology had given her a new career, one in which she had gone quickly and ruthlessly to the top before her marriage to the President of the Church of Scientology International. The other station-wagon contained three people: two men and a woman. It drew ahead as they neared the jetty to meet the skipper of the large motor-boat which they had chartered for the morning. The man did not know that this was to be the 'Commodore's' last voyage or that the funeral he was to witness that morning in the gentle calm of a bay in the Pacific Ocean on the Californian coast was that of a man who had started his life's voyage as a Navy man in these very waters and ended it as a notorious recluse. Not for a moment did he suspect that the name of the bulky Caucasian whose ashes occupied the silver urn was Lafayette Ron Hubbard, science-fiction writer and founder of a religion which had millions of followers worldwide. Now only seven of those followers were present, as the sun glinted on the ocean around their small vessel, to say goodbye to Ron as they affectionately and devotedly knew him. There was a reason for the seclusion and the privacy. It was a very simple reason. Those millions of followers around the world did not know that Hubbard was dead. The seven secret mourners intended to keep it that way for at least a few more hours. The youngest of the seven, a slim youth in his early twenties with a drooping moustache, was dressed in black trousers and a white short-sleeved shirt. The insignia and epaulettes he wore were not from the United States Navy, but the badges of the Sea Organization, the elite 12 corps of Scientology. Commander David Miscavige opened a slim volume bound in maroon leather and began to read, his strong, deep voice trembling with emotion. '*The finely grist mill of time is spent in service such as yours*,' he began. '*We gained from Ron, who gave to us from his past the ability to live and fare against the tides and storms of fate. Its true we've lost his shoulder up against the wheel and lost as well his counsel and his strength. But lost them only for a while*.' As the blank verse from Scientology's book of ceremonies was read, two mourners stood with their heads bowed, looking into the water. Pat and Annie Broeker were husband and wife and the only two people, apart from Miscavige, who knew where and how Ron Hubbard had lived these past three years. Pat Broeker was well suited to such clandestine activities, He had a voracious appetite for spy stories, fictional and factual, and had the nickname within Scientology of '007'. He was in his mid thirties, a High School graduate who had attended college but had been no high flier. His succession of posts within Scientology had resulted in his being 'busted' from every one except the last, which was as a financial courier to Hubbard himself. That post proved to be providential in 1980 when Hubbard learned that the authorities were about to force him into court. He disappeared and Pat and Annie Broeker became his only link with the outside world. '*We do not tremble faced with death - we know that living is not breath. Prevail! Go, Ron, and take the life that offers now, and live in good expectancy that we will do our part*.' Annie Broeker let a tear glisten on her cheek. She was Pat Broeker's third wife. But in this marriage Annie was the dominant partner. Now in her late twenties, she had fifteen years of service in the Sea Org and despite being 'busted' in 1979 from her post as deputy commanding officer of the organization by Hubbard's wife, Mary Sue, with whom 'bad blood' still existed, she had survived. She was tough. 5' 6" in height, she stood 2" higher than Miscavige and above her husband in the pecking order. '*Your debts are paid. This chapter of thy life is shut. Go now, dear Ron, and live once more in happier time and place. Thank you, Ron. And now here lift up your eyes and say to him goodbye*.' David Miscavige was nearing the end of the funeral service written by Ron Hubbard, although seldom performed throughout the hundreds of Scientology churches scattered round the world. For twenty years now Ron had developed the doctrine of its 'religious technology' or 'tech' as he called it. He had administered it through memos and 13 RELIGION INC. bulletins from the Hubbard Communications Office. If the tech was Scientology's Bible, the HCOBs were its canon law. Neatly bound in green folders, they defined what to do, how to do it, and to whom to do it. Ron had even covered the present circumstances. The Press, those 'merchants of chaos', and the Government, stacked full of 'Suppressive Persons', would have a field-day when they realized that Ron had 'dropped the body', Miscavige reflected. They would move in for the kill. It would lead to severe strain on the orgs. Where would the leadership come from? They had always relied on Ron's word to settle policy matters. In recent years outsiders had been told that he had retired to devote himself to study and writing, but insiders knew that Ron was always there in memo or in spirit. Now they would not know where to turn. That was why David Miscavige had to keep his control. As Ron's protege he had the task of 'keeping the show on the road' and 'getting the stats up'. '*Come, friends, he is all right and he is gone. We have our work to do, and he has his. He will be welcome there*.' Miscavige raised his hand in a spontaneous salute to the leader to whom he was devoted. The ocean air was not suited to his asthma. His enemies called him the 'asthmatic dwarf' behind his back. Those who had felt the lash of his tongue usually changed it to 'poison dwarf'. Despite his youth and his size, Miscavige had a reputation for getting things done. He had learned from Ron that if a little hysterical screaming and shouting was necessary to achieve something, you didn't think twice - you shouted. He had used the technique to great effect at the Mission Holders' Conference in San Francisco in 1982. It had been a tense time. The grasp on power which the founding documents of the Religious Technology Center had granted to him and his colleagues was incomplete until he was seen to be in control. The next task had been to remove those who might challenge that authority. Ron could not help him. He had been incapacitated by a severe stroke, far worse than the one he had suffered in 1975. As Ron lay dying, David Miscavige knew that the Religious Technology Center was the only thing that could save Scientology. It protected him from prosecution, it safeguarded the tech and the orgs and it gave him the authority he needed to get the job done. The body had been properly certified and all formalities had been completed. The 'high crime' would have been to stand by and watch the enemies of Scientology destroy the organization that had nurtured him since he was a small child. He was not ashamed to look on Ron as a father figure. To his enemies Scientology was a 14 PROLOGUE cult, a con, a corporation marketing false religion. To David Miscavige, it was all he knew. *** What you have just read is mostly fictional. However, the characters are real. There *is* a ranch at San Luis Obispo in Southern California. L. Ron Hubbard mysteriously disappeared in 1980. The Religious Technology Center *does* own the Scientology trademarks which bring in millions of dollars per month worldwide. David Miscavige, a relatively inexperienced member of the full-time staff of the Church of Scientology, became within months its most influential figure. All that is documented and acknowledged. But six years after he disappeared and became a recluse, it was still not known whether Ron Hubbard was alive or dead. Then on Monday night, 27 January 1986, Earle Cooley, Chief Counsel for the Church of Scientology, and Heber Jentzsch, President of the Church of Scientology International, made their fateful announcement. Hubbard was 'officially' dead. They explained that he had left the bulk of his multi-million dollar estate to the Church of Scientology. They revealed that his body had been cremated and its ashes scattered. No post mortem had been carried out, and although the coroner of San Luis Obispo County had received blood specimens and fingerprints, speculation inevitably arose that Hubbard did not die in January 1986 but had been dead for over two years. During the past six years since he had disappeared immense changes had taken place in the leadership of the organization he founded. During that time his followers were encouraged to believe that he was still keeping a watchful eye on matters from his secret retreat, now revealed to have been a ranch near San Luis Obispo, 150 miles north west of Los Angeles. His followers continued to act as if he were still alive. He was away studying for another book, they said. He was entitled to his privacy, they argued, when asked why he did not come out of seclusion to answer the charges made against him. He was no longer in charge of Scientology, they protested, and could not be brought to court to justify some of the malpractices of those who were. His opponents took a different view. He was in hiding to avoid his crimes of tax avoidance, criminal conspiracy and fraud, they alleged. Far from his having retired from running Scientology, they produced documents which linked him to the burglary by his wife and nine others of Federal offices in 1977. He was laughing all the way to the bank, they said, as money continued to pour into the Scientology coffers in the early eighties. The banks were in Luxembourg and Switzerland. 15 RELIGION INC. There were others within Scientology who never lost their admiration for Hubbard. But in his absence several catastrophes befell the organization. His wife and her ten fellow conspirators were imprisoned. A cleansing of the Guardians' Office followed in which the Church of Scientology was forced to admit that many criminal acts had been done in its name. There was a purge. However, the new leaders - Miscavige prominent among them - were resented. Longstanding Scientologists with a string of qualifications from the church were 'busted' from their posts and they left to form an independent movement, but retained their devotion to the 'tech' (the doctrine and practices of Scientology) and their personal loyalty to Hubbard. They were declared 'Suppressive Persons' by the church, 'Declares' (effectively ex-communication orders imposing a ban on associating with their former friends within the official church) began to pour forth. A bitter battle ensued with both movements fighting to win converts, the official church from outside its own ranks, and thus to bring fresh money into the rapidly emptying coffers. The independents lowered their prices for courses in Scientology and were accused by the official church of 'squirrelling the tech' - as great a crime in their eyes as heresy was to medieval theologians. If the penalty stopped somewhat short of that advocated by Aquinas for counterfeiters of the faith, the animosity was no less than that which the Inquisition felt for its victims. The church which had campaigned so virulently against psychiatrists and governments for 'persecuting' it, found itself conducting a crusade against its own adherents. One result of this was that disaffected Scientologists began to campaign against the cult. They duplicated memos, disclosed confidential processes, vilified the official church and joined in lawsuits as prosecution witnesses. What emerged was a mountain of testimony, much of it unfavourable to Scientology. Journalists seized on these revelations but until now the inside information has not been collected and published in book form. Another consequence was that the Church of Scientology realized that it had either to reform its ways or be subject to wholesale attack in the courts and in the media. I have benefited from this more open policy in that I have had the co-operation of the Church of Scientology in writing this book. I have also had the advantage of talking at length to dissident Scientologists, former members of the church who now repudiate it utterly, and the two men whom Scientology regards as its public enemies numbers one and two: Boston attorney Michael Flynn and Harvard psychiatrist Dr John Clark. 16 PROLOGUE Faced with friendliness and co-operation from all these irreconcilable sources, my task was made more difficult, not easier. I originally wanted to write a book telling the story without offending anyone, but the more written material and personal evidence I gathered, the more I became convinced that despite my good intentions and those of many Scientologists, I could not avoid the verdict that Scientology does more harm than good and that its founder Ron Hubbard was more of an evil genius than an idol with feet of clay. 17 1 L. Ron Hubbard: Guru, God or Demon? IT WAS Mr Justice Latey in the Royal Courts of Justice on 23 July 1984 who made the most swingeing public attack on L. Ron Hubbard's credibility yet mounted. He was trying a custody case involving a ten-year-old boy and an eight-year-old girl. Their mother had left Scientology and contended that if the children remained with their father they would be brought up as Scientologists and severely damaged. The teachings and practices of Scientology became an issue in the trial, as did the character and conduct of its founder, Lafayette Ron Hubbard. Mr Justice Latey described Hubbard variously in the course of his judgement as a 'charlatan and worse'; 'a cynical liar'; 'grimly reminiscent of Hitler'; and his church as 'corrupt, sinister and dangerous'. On the other hand, Hubbard's followers saw him as a unique spiritual teacher who had an insight into the mysteries of life, a guru who had been a prolific science-fiction writer (with claims of over twenty-three million books sold) and teacher, pouring forth articles, memoranda and books on the subject of Dianetics, which he transformed into the religion of Scientology. Where there is such a sharp divergence over a person it is usual to turn to the published facts as any historian would. This is where Hubbard achieves a unique distinction among controversial figures. Not even the facts about him are beyond dispute. That he was born on 13 March 1911 in Tilden, Nebraska, is about the only agreed fact. Thereafter the claims Hubbard made for himself in submitting material to reference works (or the claims that were made on his behalf by his zealous admirers) part company with the facts. Even a little detail such as the claim that he grew up on a ranch owned by his grandparents in Montana is completely untrue. His exploits as an explorer or as a young boy travelling extensively in the Far East, sitting at the 18 L. RON HUBBARD: GURU, GOD, OR DEMON? feet of gurus, are as fictional as any of his later sci-fi stories. The picture of a romantic adventurer invented by Hubbard for himself is forgiveable in a teller of stories as a harmless vanity, but when his academic record is claimed as some kind of authority for his views, or his war record touted as evidence of his courage and moral integrity, and then both are shown to be a tissue of lies, then one begins to suspect that Hubbard was more of a pathological liar than a dreamer. The 'doctorate' from Sequoia University is nothing more than a $20 mail order effort. The nuclear physics course ('the first of its kind ever') that he attended while gaining his civil engineering degree at George Washington University was one of the courses he registered for while there for ONE term - and he failed it, gaining an overall grade of 'D'. The exploits of Hubbard as an explorer and pioneer of geological surveys of Puerto Rico are fictitious. His career as a 'Barnstormer' pilot before the war must have been severely handicapped by the fact that he never possessed a licence to fly powered aircraft, only a glider licence. All these claims and more have been subjected to extensive research - none more so than Hubbard's war record in the US Navy. He claimed to be a much-decorated war hero who commanded a corvette and during hostilities was crippled and wounded. The only true fact is that he was in the Navy. The rest is pure fiction. It was the discovery that Hubbard's war record was bogus which sparked off the defection of researcher Gerry Armstrong from Scientology. He had been assigned to assist writer Omar Garrison in preparing a biography of Hubbard and kept some of the documents as proof to protect himself. It was in the court case to win them back in 1984 that Scientology scored its biggest own goal. The case was presided over by Judge Paul Breckenridge in California Superior Court (Los Angeles County) and was brought by Hubbard's wife, Mary Sue. At first it looked as if the defence documents tracing Hubbard's naval career were to prove damning. When Hubbard was briefly in command of an escort vessel USS PC-815 in the spring of 1943, he ordered its guns to be fired on an uninhabited island in neutral territorial waters off Mexico. He was summoned to a court martial and removed from command. In 1945 he was hospitalized - not from war wounds, but on psychiatric grounds. Documents testifying to his unfitness for command were introduced. Then the Scientologists brought out their star witness, Captain Thomas Moulton, who testified that he had known Hubbard at submarine school in 1942. 19 RELIGION INC. Unfortunately for the plaintiffs, under cross-examination Captain Moulton related that Hubbard had told him how he was involved in the first action in the Second World War at Pearl Harbour and how his destroyer had gone down with all hands save himself. Hit in the kidneys, Hubbard had crawled ashore and subsequently sailed to Australia. Captain Moulton's testimony not only stressed his credulity but exposed yet another well-spring in the abundantly irrigated fields which had been sown with Hubbard's lies. The difficulty Hubbard had in urinating at the time he knew Moulton was not the result of a war wound. Documents in Hubbard's handwriting produced in court showed he had contracted gonorrhoea after sex with a lady named Fern. In the British case, Justice Latey poured scorn on another claim that Hubbard was sent by US Naval Intelligence to break up a black magic ring in California: 'He was not. He was himself a member of that occult group and practised ritual sexual magic in it.' Thus the picture of Hubbard as a romancer and purveyor of flim-flam gives way to a darker portrait of a pathological liar distorting the truth about himself for personal gain. His application for a disability pension for a war wound that never existed was cynically undertaken. Armstrong's attorney Michael Flynn tells of a document which relates how Hubbard declared he was going into the hearing for the pension and 'convince the Feds I'm disabled and then I'm gonna laugh at them'. 'This is the mindset which created Scientology, a man who is making these fraudulent claims about himself,' says Flynn. It was in 1946 that Hubbard was first involved with Aleister Crowley's black magic movement, the Ordo Templi Orientis (Order of the Oriental Temple). The Church of Scientology claims that Hubbard was working as an undercover policeman for the Los Angeles Police Department when he infiltrated a black-magic ring in Pasadena at that time. It was run by Dr Jack Parsons, a top rocket scientist who was a disciple of Crowley. In this instance the facts are not in dispute: Hubbard ran off to Florida with a lady named Betty in a yacht belonging to Parsons and with $10,000 of his money. Soon afterwards the ring broke up. Hubbard's devotees hold this up as a successful undercover operation, but in the absence of official acknowledgement by the authorities of Hubbard acting as their agent, many may choose to believe that it was a case of one scoundrel ripping off another. The Church of Scientology was successful in obtaining a retraction by *The Sunday Times* in 1969 and in winning an action in 1971 20 L. RON HUBBARD: GURU, GOD, OR DEMON? against the author John Symonds and publishers of *The Great Beast*, a biography of Crowley, which alleged that Hubbard's new religion was derived from black magic. There is no evidence that Hubbard continued his occult practices through the time that he was in charge of the cult in the sixties and seventies, but there is evidence linking him with Crowley's beliefs. First, there is the *Penthouse* interview of June 1983 with Hubbard's son Ronald (nicknamed 'Nibs'), who broke with him in 1959. There are some grounds for doubting Hubbard Jr. as a reliable witness. As we shall see in a later chapter, he has at different times retracted some of his allegations against his father, but in this interview he stated: 'When Crowley died in 1954, my father thought he should wear the cloak of the beast and become the most powerful being in the universe ...What a lot of people don't realize is that Scientology is black magic ...spread out over a long time period. To perform black magic generally takes a few hours or, at most, a few weeks, but in Scientology it's stretched out over a lifetime and so you don't see it. Black magic is the inner core of Scientology - and is probably the only part of Scientology that really works.' The fact that Nibs Hubbard (or Ronald DeWolf as he is now known) still conducts courses in techniques derived from Scientology, for fees, perhaps undermines the credibility of these allegations. His analysis of the dependency of Scientology on black magic is perhaps tinged by his deep animosity towards his father. But the 'mindset' of an occultist, who uses ritual to acquire power and dominance over others, is totally consistent with Hubbard's psychological profile. In his Philadelphia lectures in 1952 he makes the link himself in his own words: 'The magical cults of the 8th-12th centuries in the Middle East were fascinating; the only modern work that has anything to do with them is a trifle wild in spots but is a fascinating work in itself, and that's written by Aleister Crowley - the late Aleister Crowley - my very good friend...Crowley exhumed a lot of the data from these old magic cults and he handles cause and effect quite a bit. Cause and effect is handled according to a ritual...Now a magician - getting back to cause and effect and Aleister's work - a magician postulates what his goal will be before he starts to accomplish what he is doing.'1 Ron Hubbard was never openly a magician but in cause and effect through Scientology he created rituals and held millions spellbound through the power of his will. How he came to discover the means to *** 1 (PDC Lecture 18) 21 RELIGION INC. do it is a fascinating story. Like Mae West's 'Come up and see me sometime', or Bogart's 'Play it again, Sam', or Cagney's 'You dirty rat', the saying attributed to Hubbard regarding the profit to be made out of starting a new religion, was probably never made by him. Scientologists have drawn attention to a letter of Eric Blair (George Orwell: *Collected Essays*, Vol. 1, p. 304) which ironically suggests that the way to make a million is to start a new religion. Hubbard certainly achieved that, but before the chicken of Scientology came the egg of Dianetics. Dianetics means literally 'through the mind', although Hubbard defined it as 'through the soul': Since he did not complete even a fictitious course in Greek, the mistake is perhaps understandable. The bible of Dianetics is his book *Dianetics: the Modern Science of Mental Health* (DMSMH), published in 1950. This date has been adopted by the Church of Scientology as the *fons et origo* of its religion and you will sometimes see red-letter events designated 'A.D. 25', which means 1985 or 'after Dianetics 25', not *anno Domini*.1 It is uncertain how much of Dianetics was actually discovered by Hubbard. In the late forties he was writing science-fiction stories and spent some time in California as a screenwriter. Whether or not he plagiarized the ideas in DMSMH became irrelevant after its publication, when he became widely acknowledged as the authority on the subject. It defines the principal driving force in life as the will to survive. This expresses itself through eight dynamics - the original four being: through self-preservation; through procreation; through family or race; through all mankind. Thus if you hear a Scientologist saying that someone is '2-D out-ethics' he means that they have been guilty of a sexual misdemeanour or unethical behaviour in the second dynamic. This org-speak is a feature of Scientology in which all terms are defined strictly and processes given technical names by Ron. Like the Red Queen, a word means what Ron says it means. Dianetics postulates the analytical mind which sets men apart from the animals and the 'reactive mind' which absorbs all experiences of pain and pleasure as individuals pass along the 'time-track' of life. Hubbard took an Eastern view that this time-track was cyclic through successive reincarnations. In the early years of Dianetics there were practitioners who violently disagreed with this. It led to some of the first splits within the Dianetics movement. *** 1 The first Church of Scientology org was opened in Los Angeles in 1954: the Founding Church of Scientology in Washington, DC in 1955. 22 L. RON HUBBARD: GURU, GOD, OR DEMON? The theory of Dianetics was developed by Hubbard through lectures and publications. Other dynamics were added. Number five dealt with the urge to survive as a life organism. Six was the urge to survive as part of the physical universe of MEST, which stood for Matter-Energy-Space-Time. Seven was the survival of the spirit or 'theta', as he called it. Thetans are spiritual beings who have realized their potential and are not held back by the handicap of 'engrams'. Up to this state a person is a 'preclear'. Engram-free, they become 'Clear' - a state akin to salvation, but different from the religious concept in that Clears could supposedly be made and measured, The controversial claim was made that Clears recovered from illness more quickly and suffered disease less often, a result which has, not surprisingly, never been borne out in proper scientific research. The eighth dynamic was survival as part of the supreme being, Scientology's nirvana. Two other dogmas are worth noting. First, the ARC triangle, which stands for Affinity-Reality-Communication. These are mutually related so that if communication is low then it follows that affinity and reality will be low. Secondly, there is the tone-scale invented by Hubbard, which ranges from 0.0 (dead), through grief at 0.5, sympathy at 0.9 and covert hostility at 1.1, to the ceiling of 4.0, which equals enthusiasm. Walking tall at 4.0, the individual would be a MEST clear, free from psychosomatic ills and nearly immune to bacteria. Hubbard extended his observations to declare that some political ideologies were higher on the tone-scale than others. Liberalism has a 'higher tone' than Fascism, which is superior to Communism. The preclear who cannot recall incidents in his present life while conscious, awake and 'in present time' (known as straight-wire processing), is badgered time and again with the same question until he remembers. Or various techniques can be used by the auditor, the person who is conducting the session with the preclear (often abbreviated to pc). For example: 'The auditor asks the pc to run through a moment of sexual pleasure and then when his pc, who does not have to recount this moment aloud, appears to have settled into that moment, the auditor demands that the pc goes immediately to conception. The pc will normally do so...' (*Science of Survival* II, p. 173). Persistent cross-examination by the auditor can break down the resistance of the pc to confronting certain painful incidents or engrams in his or her past. The induction of Dianetic reverie heightens this quasi-influence of the auditor over the pc, but clearly in the right hands Dianetics 23 RELIGION INC. could be an effective form of releasing mental blocks and trauma. It was a tool that Hubbard was to develop into a complex system dominated by his strong and ugly personality, which has more than once been called paranoid and schizophrenic. With the publication of DMSMH in 1950, Hubbard had been lucky enough to acquire two influential figures to join the Board of Directors of the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation, which he set up in 1950. One was John W. Campbell, the editor of *Astounding Science Fiction*, which Hubbard had contributed an article on Dianetics in 1948. The other was a medical man, Dr Joseph Winter. When the initial interest waned and cash-flow to the Foundation became a problem, Don Purcell of Wichita, Kansas, stepped in to provide a cash injection in 1951. Purcell became President of the Foundation, with Hubbard as Chairman and Vice-President, and the Foundation was relocated in Wichita. However, in 1952 the Foundation went bankrupt and Hubbard sold his stock to Purcell along with all the copyrights, including DMSMH. There were many reasons for the fragmentation. The various scattered field groups jealously guarded their independence and did not acknowledge Hubbard as chief. His authoritarian style was a problem and this led to a split with John Campbell. Hubbard's espousal of occultism and his identification of 'past lives' as the source of many engrams did not please those, including Dr Winter, who wanted to see Dianetics accepted by the scientific community. It had been lumped together with psycho-analysis and hypnotism because of its stress on childhood trauma and its use of Dianetic 'reverie'. The battle was fierce, each group having its own journal (*Dianews, Dianotes*, etc), and several breakaway methodologies based on Dianetics were formed at this time, including Synergetics. Hubbard was faced with a problem in the early days of the HDRF. So far the state of 'Clear' had been much touted but there appeared to be no means of agreeing that Clears had been achieved. With characteristic initiative, Hubbard announced that his second wife, Sara Northrup, was one, but when she divorced him, making bitter accusations against him, the status of Clears and of the HDRFs suffered another blow. Roy Wallis, the sociologist who catalogued the rise of Scientology from its origins in Dianetics in his book *The Road to Total Freedom* (1976), accounts for the popularity of Dianetics in 1950 as a reason for its demise. Like the concept of a 'flying saucer' current at the time, 'Clear' became a Rorschach blot concept which could be all things to 24 L. RON HUBBARD: GURU, GOD, OR DEMON? all people. They could impose their aspirations upon it. Simply by reading DMSMH they could start auditing one another and, unlike other psychotherapies, it did not insist on professional training or standards for its practitioners, whose claims about their competence could not be verified. In *Marginal Medicine* (1976) Wallis argues that when Hubbard came to found Scientology, he profited from these lessons. 'Scientology was organized from the outset in a highly centralized and authoritarian fashion and was practised on a professional basis. Its theory and method were only gradually revealed to those who displayed commitment to Hubbard and practised its techniques in a pure and unalloyed fashion. A rigorous method of social control emerged and it was made clear to all followers that Hubbard was the sole source of new knowledge and of interpretation of existing knowledge.' However, in 1952 the phoenix had yet to arise from the ashes of the HDRF in Wichita. Hubbard took himself off literally to the town of Phoenix, Arizona, and opened a centre there in March 1952. He travelled in September of that year to England to lecture in London and returned again in January to find interest in his theories increasing. In between these visits he delivered the famous Philadelphia Doctorate Lectures (1-19 December 1952). These are still for sale on cassette by the Church of Scientology at over $2000 for the set and include Hubbard's notorious reference to the R2-45 process for exteriorisation. In plain language, it means that someone can be released from their body by shooting them with a Colt '45, which Ron proceeded to demonstrate by firing a revolver into the floor of the podium. Hubbard then 'invented' the term Scientology. Whether or not he borrowed the term is immaterial. He has made it all his own, one of the few achievements which is undisputed. He defined it as 'the science of knowing how to know' and differentiated it from Dianetics, which he explained as derived from through (*dia*) the soul (*nous*). 'Dianetics addresses the body. Scientology addresses the thetan [spirit]...Thus Dianetics is used to knock out and erase illnesses, unwanted sensations, misemotion, somatics, pain, etc. Scientology and its grades are *never* used for such things. Scientology is used to increase spiritual freedom, intelligence, ability, to produce immortality.' (*What is Scientology?*, p. 209) In Phoenix, Hubbard began HASI (Hubbard Association of Scientologists, which later gained the suffix International) and waged war on Purcell in Wichita, accusing him of profiteering from Dianetics. In late 1954 Purcell switched his support to the splinter group 25 RELIGION INC. Synergetics and Hubbard had a lucky break. Anxious to free himself from Hubbard's lawsuits, Purcell gave Hubbard back the copyrights of the Dianetics material. Ron now had the opportunity to have his Scientology cake and to eat Dianetics for breakfast. He took it. In the next chapter we shall see how the tools of Dianetics became the trappings of a religion. One of the most important of these tools had hardly been used by the Dianetics movement. This was the E-Meter which had been developed by Volney G. Mathison in 1959. Although there is very little that Scientologists do not attribute to the apparently limitless genius of Hubbard, they do agree that Mathison produced the device which with minor modifications has now been renamed the 'Hubbard Electrometer'. Hubbard's original specification was for a device that was capable 'of measuring the rapid shifts in density of a body under the influence of thought and measuring them well enough to give an auditor a deep and marvellous insight into the mind of his preclear'. The instrument which fulfilled these great expectations was a form of galvanometer which operated on the principle of the wheatstone bridge so beloved of school physics labs. It was wired up to two tin cans such as those used to hold baby food or frozen orange juice. The terminals are held, one in each hand, by the preclear and thus measure the conductivity (or conversely the resistance) of the skin of the hands. Obviously this will be affected by pressure, but operators attempt to stabilize the reading for each preclear (the 'body reading') and then look for significant swings in the galvanometer needle. This is also the principle on which the lie detector works and when used to ask a preclear about his 'overts' (wrongdoing), it functions precisely in this manner. A complex terminology was developed by Hubbard to interpret the readings of the needle. It was a cocktail of slang and pseudo-science: 'theta bop' (steady dance of the needle); 'stage four' (needle goes up an inch or two, sticks, falls to the right and repeats this action); 'rock slam' (needle goes back and forth in jerky fashion); 'floating' (the goal of the auditing session when the needle floats free over a wide area unaffected by questions or commands). Scientologists usually demonstrate the working of the E-Meter by asking a subject to hold the cans, then pinching him or her on the back of the hand. This will usually cause a deflection of the needle, since it is a painful experience. When the needle has settled, the auditor then asks the subject, 'Recall that pinch'. The needle will then deflect in the same way as in the original pinch, but probably with less intensity. This test is said to demonstrate Hubbard's view of the reactive mind 26 L. RON HUBBARD: GURU, GOD, OR DEMON? - that all painful experiences on the time-track are stored until released by auditing. Wallis reviews some of the scientific work done to test this hypothesis. In one test a pc was given sodium pentathol and while he was unconscious a passage from a physics textbook was read and pain administered. Six months of subsequent auditing sessions failed to produce recall by the 'reactive mind' of the incident. The area of auditing is intensely personal. Two common questions are: 'What are you willing to tell me about?' and 'What are you willing to tell me about it?' Clearly guilt and sensitivity are being looked for by the E-Meter as voraciously as the diviner's rod hunts for water. Persistent questioning will follow 'withholds' (matters about which the pc would rather not give a straight answer). Auditing can thus be seen as a cousin of techniques such as psycho-analysis (where childhood experiences, particularly of sexuality, are tapped) and of psychotherapy. We shall see in a later chapter how this has led to accusations of brain-washing and manipulation, some of which are no more justified against the Scientologists than against any other religion. But in its early days the E-Meter ran into formidable opposition from the medical establishment in the US. It is against the law in the USA to diagnose and treat disease unless as a properly qualified medical practitioner. Dianetics had been attacked from its inception by representatives of the American Medical Association (AMA). Dr Morris Fishbein was widely quoted in 1950 when he called it yet another 'mind-healing cult'. Omar Garrison catalogues the antagonism towards Scientology by the AMA in his book *The Hidden Story of Scientology* (1974), which is largely sympathetic to the Church of Scientology and is sometimes sold in its bookshops. He contends that the AMA at one point considered planting a spy in Scientology's Founding Church in Washington and that black propaganda was spread by the AMA about Hubbard, particularly that he had received psychiatric treatment. Both these charges are somewhat ironic in that such black propaganda became one of the officially sanctioned tactics of Scientology, and evidence introduced in 1984 in the Armstrong case supports the contention that Hubbard was subject to psychiatric treatment on demobilisation from the Navy. However, it was the E-Meter that gave the authorities their greatest chance in the fifties of acting against Hubbard's organization. Garrison quotes Oliver Field of the AMA's Bureau of Investigation writing to an Ohio scientist opposed to Hubbard: 'We notice in copies of correspondence you enclosed that Dr Milstead of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has 27 RELIGION INC. indicated that an investigation is going forward so far as the device of the E-Meter is concerned and perhaps that activity is the only immediate hope of achieving any interference with the activities of the Scientologists.' The FDA already had an agent within the Washington church. His reports were eventually to lead to a raid on the church on 4 January 1963 by US marshals, in which Scientology files and E-Meters were seized. The Scientologists were outraged. A protracted legal battle ensued with the Church of Scientology contending that what was involved was not simply an attack on itself as a religious movement but upon the First Amendment to the US Constitution which guarantees freedom of religion. In the course of its submissions it contended that the E-Meter was a religious artefact and if it was held to be an instrument of healing then this would also have to apply to the mass wafers, candles and holy water of Roman Catholicism. What was important here in the development of Scientology into a religion was that if the E-Meter was judged to be a religious artefact then a religion had been created in which spiritual progress could actually be measured and practised without recourse to providential grace from God. It could be assured by performing the correct techniques and by following a manual. It was truly a religious 'technology'. The 'truths' of religion had been rendered as quasi-scientific principles. Salvation was not something which came to those whom God chose, but was open to anyone who paid for an auditing course. That was, of course, blasphemy to orthodox religionists. It was the age-old heresy of gnosticism repackaged in a way to appeal to twentieth-century scientific man. The E-Meter was declared by Hubbard to be more infallible than any pope and was as immutable as any law of thermodynamics. 'It sees all, knows all. It is never wrong.' (*Electro-psychometric Auditing Operator's Manual*, p. 57) Right from its inception in the fifties the Church of Scientology had established a collision course with orthodox religion and medicine. It also acquired another enemy, the Inland Revenue Service, or IRS. Scientology had been incorporated on 21 July 1955 as a non-profitmaking society and corporation. Like other churches in the USA it did not, therefore, have to pay taxes. In 1958 the IRS began to try to alter this state of affairs and to withdraw the tax-exempt status of Scientology. This hostility from Government agencies did much to establish the paranoia about the State which was to lead Scientologists and their founder into many excesses in later years. Despite a growing network of churches throughout the US and a burgeoning income, it 28 L. RON HUBBARD: GURU, GOD, OR DEMON? also explains why Hubbard sought a new Mecca for his Dianetic dollars in the late fifties which was far from his enemies' influence. He found it in the rural splendour of Sussex, England, in the grandeur of a mansion which was once the domain of the Maharaja of Jaipur. 29 2 A Religious Technology SAINT HILL Manor nestles in the woodlands of Sussex, two miles from the town of East Grinstead. A gaudy board advertising Dianetics stands at the entrance gate, and the lodge exhibits a home-made notice proclaiming that its owners have nothing to do with Scientology. So the visitor must pass on through the gates where he will see a large carpark to his left and a notice proclaiming the Church of Scientology accompanied by the eight-pointed crucifix, which, like all the trademarks and utterances of L. Ron Hubbard, has been registered for copyright. Over to the right as the drive continues downhill, the visitor's eye is drawn to a large, one-storey complex built in the distinctive yellow sandstone of the area in the style of a castle. Over a verandah hangs the Reception sign and it is here that students from all over the world get their first glimpse of what was for fifteen years the headquarters of Hubbard's empire: a cramped bookshop (only works by Ron on sale), a tiny old-fashioned manual telephone exchange and everywhere on the walls pictures of Hubbard or posters carrying slogans from his works. To the rear of the 'castle' is the course-room where students hunch over desks, wearing earphones through which they listen to taped lectures by Ron Hubbard. Open in front of each of them is a dictionary, since a prime dictum is that no student should ever pass a word he or she does not understand. The dictionaries are special Scientology ones and include definitions of certain words which are used in a special way by Hubbard (e.g. 'Having: to be able to touch or permeate or to direct the disposition of'). Presiding at a side table sits the Case Supervisor who assists and tests the students' familiarity with the study material. With its blackboards, posters and tables littered with books and teaching aids, the course-room resembles a schoolroom. 30 A RELIGIOUS TECHNOLOGY Around it are a honeycomb of auditing rooms where auditors and their preclears are closeted in private session. In my several visits over the past few years these have rarely been in use and the students working in the course-room have never numbered more than a couple of dozen. The 'stats crash' which hit the Church of Scientology in the wake of the expulsions and resignations of 1982-3 has hit Saint Hill harder than most. The castle complex was begun in the boom years when cash and people were pouring through the gates of Saint Hill. It was constructed largely by 'slave labour' and finished only in October 1985. The conscripted workers were members of the Rehabilitation Project Force or RPFers as they are known within Scientology. These are staff members who have gone 'out-ethics' - jargon for sins committed. These might range from incompetence or dishonesty to sexual misdemeanours or uttering opinions subversive to Scientology. Their pay as staff members (usually not much more than bare subsistence level) is halved and they are given low rations while they are working their penance on the RPF. Within the castle is Ron's room: a study, it was set apart for the 'Commodore' should he ever return. Every Scientology org has one, kitted out with photographs of Ron, a desk and chair, some personal mementoes and a bust in bronze of the man himself. On the desk lies a white Navy cap. Hubbard never saw some of these offices but they were provided for him should he arrive and 'want a place of work'. He did, however, use the large office/shrine in the manor at Saint Hill when he went there in 1959. To reach the study, the visitor continues his journey down the drive, past the canteen unit, a shabby prefabricated building which resembles a greasy-spoon cafe inside. The appearance of the hut does not apparently belie the quality of the food. Former students at Saint Hill recall eating low-quality food while paying richly for courses, and in recent years a diet of rice and beans was fed to the troops when income dipped low. Strategically placed around the drive and wooded grounds are loudspeakers and occasionally Ron's voice will literally talk to the trees, booming forth one of his lectures in his distinctive style. Opposite the canteen is the conservatory known as the Pavilion where he really did talk to the plants, which were connected to E-Meters to study their reactions to events around them. Allegedly he produced some giant tomatoes by this method, but like many of the legends of Hubbard prowess, the tomatoes may have grown more in the telling. 31 RELIGION INC. The most distinctive room in the manor itself is not Ron's study but the Monkey Room - a large lounge surrounded completely by a mural painted by the artist John Spencer Churchill for a previous owner. In spring 1985 the room was restored by the Scientologist owners to its former glory and I attended the opening at which a bemused Mr Churchill made a polite speech surrounded by Scientologists and the monkeys of every species which had been painted anthropomorphically by the artist with particular personalities in mind. The grim statistics had been put aside for the day and as I sipped my half glass of champagne (perhaps this was to be my version of the RPF), I mused that it was appropriate that the shrine of Scientology, which had specialized in making monkeys out of so many people, should be graced by such a mural. The religious nature of Scientology is not very evident at Saint Hill. The chapel of this Mecca of the prophet Ron is scarcely used. On one visit I ran my finger along the pews in the chapel, which is no more than an outbuilding of brick bordering the Pavilion. It came up pretty grimy. Although 'ministers' of the Church of Scientology adopt the style 'Reverend' and occasionally wear dog-collars, attendance at services of worship is not obligatory or a regular part of the practice of Scientology. There is a religious service. Craig Mathieson, who runs the UK organization, told me: 'There are hymns and readings from Ron Hubbard and Saint John, stuff like that.' Craig is a Scot whose brother is highly placed in the Los Angeles org and whose 'second dynamic' abilities to attract ladies to his team at Saint Hill earned his apprentices the nickname of 'Craig's harem'. The overseer of the 'tech' for the US is Richard Reiss, an American whose sober manner gives him an air of a divinity don, which is the role he fulfils with regard to the doctrines of Scientology. Hubbard, he explained, is not God, but a spiritual being who discovered a system through which men and women could attain the status of gods (or thetans) through its techniques. When asked where that left the relationship of Scientology to Christianity, Richard Reiss replied with some understatement, 'Jesus Christ does not figure in the religious technology of Ron Hubbard.' That was an honest answer, for, as we shall see, there are several areas of complete incompatibility between Scientology and Christianity, despite the claim made by well-meaning Scientologists that many of their members are both. The Scientology cross is at first glance a crucifix with splintered ends. The eight points represent the eight life dynamics. There the resemblance ends. Christianity believes in a creator God. Scientology, 32 as we shall see later, believes in a sci-fi cosmology which teaches that the earth was invaded by clusters of 'body-thetans', akin to demons or astral spirits. Not all Scientologists are aware of this teaching until they reach the higher levels, but there is no doubt that this holy grail - of which I have seen a photocopy in Hubbard's handwriting - comes nearer to pagan cosmologies than it does to the myths of Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Buddhism. Why, then, does the Church of Scientology persist with its quasi-Christian costumes, symbols and titles for its 'ministers'? Why does it conduct ceremonies parallel to the christenings, weddings and funerals of Christian churches? The cynical answer might be that thereby it can claim tax-exempt status as a religion. In a Christian culture the 'ministers' can command the status and respectability which accrues to ministers of religion, and attract interest as a moral force for good in the community. There is no doubt that many Scientology works are of the highest ethical nature. The booklet *The Way to Happiness* is a distillation of the ethical principles of the great religions, and it is a tribute to Hubbard that he could issue something so simple and popular which can be read by the man in the street when many of those religions are struggling to make themselves heard. The goal of 'clearing the planet', the equivalent of bringing in the Kingdom of God on earth (a world 'free of insanity, war and crime'), is altruistic. Many of the campaigns upon which Scientology has embarked are socially beneficial. Its members have campaigned against leubotomy surgery in psychiatry and take a radical approach to mental illness which has come into fashion long after they first espoused it. They work to eliminate drugs through the programme Narconon and there is evidence that many young people have been weaned away from drugs through this therapy. I met Nicky Hopkins, once a session keyboard man with the Rolling Stones, who gave Narconon the credit for his rehabilitation from drugs. In Hollywood a gentle and polite young man named Gary Wallman administered a 'touch assist' (trying to channel mental energy into a sick person by touching him) to me when I had a stomach upset. Afterwards he told me that he had been a 'long-haired, no-good who wanted to kill people'. Now he is a clean-shaven, well-mannered person with a black belt in karate and a job as a lighting electrician on the sets of Hollywood television series like 'Hart to Hart'. Stories like these cannot be thrown away. But the black belts must be set against the black record of Hubbard. Utilitarianism - the pursuit of the greatest good of the greatest number - is a system of 33 RELIGION INC. evaluation which does not rate Scientology very highly. One analogy might be that poisonous popes and corrupt cardinals in the medieval church could still not prevent some spiritual luminaries from shining. Another analogy closer to our own time sees Hubbard as a Hitler who gave people a system, albeit an evil one, through which to channel their energies, and while not all the Germans who supported Hitler were evil, so there are benign Scientologists who work through Hubbard's system for a better world. At Saint Hill Manor in his vast study, Hubbard worked through the sixties improving the way in which his theories were put across. Emphasis was on standardized techniques, which were dubbed the technology. There was no greater sin than adulterating the 'tech' as it was called. This led him to pour forth a succession of memoranda defining processes and terms. These HCOBs (Hubbard Communications Office Bulletins) were epistles added to the gospels of Dianetics and they soon became holy scriptures in themselves. Their style grew increasingly more authoritarian and idiosyncratic.1 While drug-taking is 'out-ethics' for Scientologists, smoking cigarettes is not. I have never encountered such a high proportion of cigarette smokers among younger people as I have in Scientology. It was suggested to me that this habit mimics the behaviour of Ron, their hero, who was a chain-smoker. It is almost as if nicotine is exempted because of the founder's little weakness for the weed. However, smoking is not allowed while 'in session', i.e. during auditing. Neither is alcohol permitted twenty-four hours prior to a session. 'Auditing,' declares Senior Technical Consultant (UK) Richard Reiss, 'is the heart of Scientology.' It is also the most expensive part. An E-Meter costs over $2,000 and a session of auditing in 1984 was $200 per hour. Scientology defends these prices on two grounds: auditing is cheap compared to alternative services of other 'professionals' such as psychiatry; it is priceless and not obtainable elsewhere. This was one of the sensitive issues when the independent movement began in 1983 and started undercutting the official church's prices. It is worth saying something about the Church of Scientology's methods of recruiting members. Some recruits come through reading one of Hubbard's books (18 %). In recent years strenuous campaigns throughout the world have been undertaken to promote DMSMH in paperback, even selling it on the streets. Its cost is low and it contains 1 *see also pages 40 and 55-6* 34 A RELIGIOUS TECHNOLOGY information about where Dianetics is available at the local branch of the Church of Scientology. However, the Church of Scientology claims that the bulk of its recruits come through a friend or relative (34%) or by word of mouth (23%). Another method is to invite passers-by to undertake a personality test (10%). This consists of filling in a form and answering various questions. Those who have completed it are added to the church's mailing list and invited back to discuss how they can iron out 'one or two problem areas'. This will involve taking a Scientology course, usually the Student Hat (more of which in a moment). This costs a mere $35 and is within the pocket of most people. Pressure will be put on the student if he or she shows interest or competence. Little is said at this point about Scientology doctrines or rules or the authoritarian structure of the organization. Why should it be? It is perfectly reasonable that Scientologists should (a) promote what they believe in; (b) do it a little at a time, without force-feeding their converts. Sometimes opponents of Scientology argue as if its very existence is a crime. That only serves to prove the church's claim that it is suffering persecution. One must be careful to distinguish between the right to believe the earth is flat and the right to charge people large sums of money to jump off the edge. The potential member is usually invited to undertake more courses. If he has sufficient funds he will be advised that APs (advance payments) will enable him to purchase these courses now and take them tomorrow at today's prices. At this point the enthusiasm of the convert is mingled with vast ignorance. Knowledge only comes a little at a time. You cannot leapfrog up the 'Bridge', the name for the stepladder of courses which Hubbard wrote. You must go one step at a time. Each step costs a great deal of money (*see pages 164-5*). The Bridge is basically divided into two sections: (a) personal progress and (b) training as an auditor. Personal progress is aimed first at the goal of 'Clear'. To reach 'Clear', several sub-levels are involved and after Clear the next steps are the OT levels. These are known as 'going OT', which stands for Operating Thetan. This training is only available residentially at a few centres and the costs begin to rise steeply. Pressure is also exercised on the smaller orgs to 'flow them up the Bridge'; in other words, to ensure a steady supply of paying customers for the advanced centres which are at Saint Hill, East Grinstead; Clearwater, Florida; Los Angeles; Copenhagen, Denmark; and Sydney, Australia. There are eight OT levels and some above, which Hubbard is said to have prepared but not 'released'. His habit of expanding the ladder with sub-sections and only issuing one step at a 35 RELIGION INC. time, or revamping certain courses in the manner of 'new improved' washing powder (as in the 'New Era Dianetics' material reissued in 1978), has guaranteed a steady flow of income over the years. Later we shall look at these OT levels, which are treated as if they were the holy grail itself. The other branch of the Bridge is to become an auditor. From the basic book auditor who acquires the ability to help others through the application of data contained in books of Dianetics and Scientology, the would-be auditor climbs through a dizzy series of grades until he or she reaches Class XII Auditor, by which time he or she will have joined the permanent staff of Scientology and the Sea Org, a uniformed organization formed by Hubbard aboard his ship in 1967. Its members wear naval insignia and sign billion-year contracts binding them to Scientology in this and future lives. Each step as an auditor has an upper level at which the student acquires the ability to C/S (or case supervise) the level beneath. One of the consequences of the breakaway movement in 1983 was that many of the more qualified auditors were 'busted' from their posts when the Religious Technology Center assumed control, thus creating a dearth of people who could 'deliver the Bridge'. It is the policy of the Church of Scientology to offer refunds to all those who have made APs and do not wish to proceed up the Bridge. The severity of the 1982-3 purge - which was followed by mass defections - is shown by the figures produced by the law firm of Eberle & Jordan of Glendale, CA for the years 1983-4. Refunds total over $2,064,992, of which $1.5 million was outstanding in June 1984. Not all Scientologists pay the full price of the courses. If they join the staff they receive an allowance per week, free accommodation and are required to work for the church, but in recompense they receive free auditing. However, there is a catch. They must sign a 'freeloader bill', which obliges them if they leave the church at a future date to pay for all the courses they have received at the full rate. Not only has this resulted in freeloader bills of thousands of pounds being presented to former church members, but it clearly can, and has, been used as a means of suppressing dissent and enforcing conformity to church discipline. No one who is in two minds about leaving the only friends and contacts he has had for a decade would do so if he knew that he would immediately be bankrupted by court action the minute he strode out of the gates. Another way credit is extended to Scientologists is in the form of loans. One such scheme was operated by Lee Lawrence from 36 A RELIGIOUS TECHNOLOGY 38 Morton Road, East Grinstead. His purpose, he says in a letter outlining the scheme, is to help Scientologists up the Bridge. 'I make loans only ABOVE L5,000. I believe that an able Scientologist can manage a smaller amount without borrowing from me.' The borrower who signed up with Mr Lawrence would have had to pay interest at the rate of 30% if he had taken out a loan in June 1982. Although by the following July Mr Lawrence was offering loans at 25%, it is worth noting that in the interim the Bank of England lending rate was as low as 9% (5 November 1982). Lawrence claims that the high interests are to enable him to cope with service price increases and any losses from default. However, he has his own scheme to cope with default. 'To discourage late payments I use a loan agreement which imposes heavy penalties for ANY late payments, even if only one day late, and I ascertain that no more than two thirds of the borrower's surplus income is required to make the monthly payments.' He adds that every loan agreement is checked and approved by the Church of Scientology officially. This means that the Church of Scientology cannot argue that the hardships arising from this scheme are outside its sphere of responsibility. Two loan agreements which I have examined, dated June 1982 and June 1983, quote interest rates of 30% and 25% respectively. In the former, penalties of L16 were imposed for late payment every month for the first year but were 'forgiven' until May 1983, when they climbed swiftly to a total of L100 alongside the monthly payment of L155. These sanctions are but one example of the control mechanisms under which the Scientologist comes should he deviate from what the church expects of him in behaviour. Squeezing individual Scientologists for as much as they can pay is justified by the Church of Scientology on the grounds that recruits are buying the unique gift of survival through future lives as a thetan. Giving away all one's possessions would be cheap at the price, runs the argument. That is indeed what many recruits do end up doing. One girl I spoke to spent L6,000 in six months on courses which never went beyond introductory level. She was already a graduate so she was not stupid and unable to learn the 'tech'. But she had the money, left to her on the death of her parents. To protect her, because her brother is still active in Scientology, I shall call her Alyson, but her story is worth telling in detail because it parallels so many others among the young, idealistic, middle-class white persons who constitute the typical recruits to Scientology. Alyson's experiences are in her own words, drawn from letters and conversations: 'Right now I wonder how I ever got involved, though I must admit 37 RELIGION INC. to a certain amount of vulnerability at the time due to the death of both my parents in 1979 (I was 26 years old at the time). The money I used on the advice of my older brother Simon, who is a Scientologist, was inherited. I am a diabetic and nearly killed myself on the "Purification Rundown" (mega vitamins, running, sauna, to rid the body of drugs, radiation, etc). I struggled through various courses of auditing, the latter at the reduced rate of L56 per hour because I was a student, I witnessed and was subjected to some terrible incidents. I was pretty disillusioned very soon but they are an extremely clever and strong organization and they don't give up until you've spent every penny you have. I am an intelligent and moral person and have a B.Sc. degree, yet I was duped. 'After a few upsetting and disgraceful incidents I realized that in no way was I going to get value for my money. However, I soon learned that it was not easy to leave ("blow"). It was about six months after I first blew that they finally left me alone. There were endless phone-calls and one staff member arrived on my doorstep and proceeded to verbally abuse me. I returned his abuse and got rid of him but the incident left me shaking with anger and I reported the incident to Tottenham Court Road (the London Scientology HQ) and I received a letter and a phone-call of apology. I wrote to Ron Hubbard twice with a view to retrieving money I had spent (including L800 I had spent on an E-Meter I had never used). I thought of writing to a newspaper to expose them but I was held by fear of retribution, but now the years have passed and I am not afraid any more and would be glad of the opportunity of preventing someone else making the mistake I made.' That was part of Alyson's letter. She is a quiet and gentle girl. She loves her brother, but Scientology is a big part of his life. 'His wife is anti it, but he loves it, and after he's been to Saint Hill he feels as if he is walking on air. He says that he's had out-of-body experiences and after you go to OT III even if the Bomb is dropped you'll be immune. They only talk about that among themselves because they say the public couldn't handle it if it got out.' Alyson smiled ruefully when she recalled leaving. 'One day I just thought, "Well, it's only money anyway."'But her Face darkened as she recalled some of the nastier tactics which were used against her. 'They make you sign overt sheets (that's the things you've done wrong): I was in trouble because I used to smoke cannabis a little, and threaten you if you don't sign that nasty things like accidents can happen. This guy Steve that I knew at Tottenham Court Road, who was really nice, came round once and was very aggressive when I had left and threatened to use the overts against me.' 38 A RELIGIOUS TECHNOLOGY There are three points worth making at this stage about Alyson's story. In every org there is a sign exhorting Scientologists to 'write to Ron' with the boast 'all mail received by me will be answered by me'. Alyson, like thousands of others, was deafened by silence in reply to her letter to Ron. Secondly, there is the reluctance of the Church of Scientology to implement its refund policy despite the large sum she had been persuaded to put on account. Third, there is the sinister use of overts as blackmail. This is decidedly contrary to church policy but, as we shall see, it has happened and Mary Sue Hubbard admitted in the Armstrong trial that pc folders were used to cull incriminating material against defectors. This is equivalent to using the secrets of the confessional against Catholics and is also expressly forbidden in the codes of Scientology, yet was practised at the highest level by the wife of the founder. It was at the end of our meeting that Alyson made her most impressive strike against the Church of Scientology. She picked up two red-covered files which represented the records and materials of her L6,000 worth of processing. 'Here,' she said, and handed them to me, 'have them and see for yourself.' I protested that they represented L6,000 and six wasted months to her. 'No,' she said with a smile, 'they're of no use to me.' Alyson may be a sadder young woman after her brush with Scientology but she is a wiser one, knowing what true values are. It is worth looking at the kind of materials which Alyson was given for her L6,000. Step one is usually the 'Student Hat', which concentrates mainly on study methods. One of the axioms of Hubbard has been much vaunted as an educational tool. This is the rule that a misunderstood word must not be passed until it is properly mastered. In HCOB of 10 March 1965, headed 'Words, Misunderstood Goofs', Hubbard writes: 'There's no hope for it, mate. You'll have to learn real English, not the 600-word basic English of the college kid, in which a few synonyms are substituted for all the big words.' This somewhat startling use of slang in praising the precise use and definition of words, is, like all the HCOBs, framed like a military directive and postscripted with the ever present 'Copyright (c) 1965 by L. Ron Hubbard. All rights reserved'. These are the three distinguishing features of the materials: (1) the authoritarian tone of the commands; (2) the idea that they are unique and technical/scientific/esoteric; (3) their distinctive style mixing slang with pseudo-technical terms and Scientology neologisms. For example, HCO Policy Letter relating to conduct of auditors, issued 39 RELIGION INC. on 19 April 1965, states: 'Any staff auditor who runs any process on any org pc that is not given in grade and level HCOBs may be charged by the Tech Sec or D of P with a misdemeanour.' In other words, you do everything according to the book written by Ron and woe betide you if you don't. This highly controlled system of behaviour is another axiom. Standard Tech delivered in a standard manner is how the Scientologist would describe it. Thus the HCOBs are not insights which Ron offers for development of the person but strict dicta which must be followed. In the 'Guide to Acceptable Behaviour for Students' contained in the HCO Policy Letter of 7 May 1969, there is a commandment to the effect that there shall be no other gods before Ron, viz: 'Do not engage in any rite, ceremony, practice, exercise, medication, diet, food therapy or any similar occult, mystical, religious, naturopathic, homeopathic, chiropractic treatment or any other healing or mental therapy while on course without the express permission of the D of T/Ethics Officer. Do not discuss your case, your auditor, your Supervisors, your classmates, L. Ron Hubbard, ORG personnel or the ORG with anyone. Take up any complaints with your supervisor.' Other commands forbid sexual promiscuity, especially adultery; or are of the school-rules variety about not dropping cigarette ends in wastepaper baskets. While many are ethically worthy they are presented overall in a manner which reduces the status of the 'student' to that of a schoolboy. Even the method by which concepts are represented by objects or plasticine and moved around a board by the student heightens the process of subjugation of the individual's rational powers. This is even more the case with the TRs (or Training Routines/Regimens). One of the first of these is 'Confronting'. The student and coach sit facing each other and stare directly into one another's eyes. Any blink, fidget or movement by the student is greeted with a cry of 'Flunk!' by the coach and they go back to the beginning. The idea is to 'train students to confront preclears in the absence of social tricks of conversation and to overcome obsessive compulsions to be "interesting".' The end product, a zombie-like stare, is consonant with the passivity which Scientology demands of its followers towards the tech. A more colourful TR is 'Bullbaiting', which is designed to 'flatten any buttons' (areas which produce a reaction from the student). The coach is joined by others who will variously tease, insult, or shout at, the preclear who must keep a passive countenance. Tickling, making funny faces, absurd suggestions, these are all part of the game and if the pc laughs 40 A RELIGIOUS TECHNOLOGY then the baiters keep on and on until no reaction is produced and the pc's buttons are said to be flattened. Typical of the routines which are offered to apprentice Scientologists are the CCHs, which stand for Communication, Control and Havingness, which Hubbard developed in Washington in 1957. He wrote: 'The purpose of the CCHs is to bring the pc through incidents and into present time. It is the reversal of "mental" auditing in that it gets the pc's attention exterior to the bank and on present time.' Hubbard adds that the pc must be coaxed as firmly as possible but not too firmly lest he be unwilling to co-operate. But he adds, 'If you have to manhandle a pc, do so. But only to help him get the process flat. If you have to manhandle the pc you've already accumulated ARC breaks and given him losses and driven him out of session .' The CCHs are a series of robotic commands and actions: CCH 1 consists of the auditor telling the pc, 'Give me that hand' over and over again and replacing it in the pc's lap. CCH 2 is supposed to demonstrate that the pc has control over his body. The auditor commands him: 'You look at that wall. Thank you. You walk to that wall. Thank you. You touch that wall. Thank you. Turn around. Thank you.' Only these words are used and auditors are not meant to enter into dialogue with pcs during session. Pc remarks are met with stonewalling remarks such as 'I'm glad you told me that...OK. Is there anything else you want to tell me?...Fine. OK', and then the session is simply resumed without further comment. The robotic activity of the auditor cannot fail to have an effect on the pc, especially when CCH processes are repeated over and over again. CCH 3 and CCH 4 are designed to get the pc to mimic movements of the auditor's hands and to mirror movements of a book which the auditor holds and moves around. A further stage requires the pc to move his mind to the wall and in his imagination put one corner next to another. The idea is that the thetan is controlling his environment, not the other way around. Ashtrays and rag dolls are employed and the pc talks to them, giving them commands and moving the objects in response to his commands. For example, I was passing along a corridor in Clearwater, Florida, when I witnessed a man shouting at a chair and manhandling it. 'Don't worry about that,' said my companion. 'He's completing one of our training processes.' Talking to ashtrays goes on for a long time and supposedly reaches the point at which the pc so penetrates the 'reality' with his mind that intention and thought are father to the action itself. Full-grown 'thetans', then, control their surroundings, not the other way round. 41 RELIGION INC. A Religious Studies student at Lancaster University named Sarah Hogge undertook the CCH course as a non-Scientologist. The Church of Scientology had previously been wary of writers and journalists taking courses and writing reports. It argues that it is impossible to observe and to submit properly to the training regimen. However, it allowed Sarah to make her study, and her tape-recorded sessions and observations make interesting reading to which both she and the Church of Scientology have allowed me access. We join Sarah Hogge (S.H.) and the auditor (A.) on her introduction to CCHs. 'Whilst on the E-Meter I was asked to define every single word that was used. This included words such as "and", "you" and "that". If I hesitated too long, or got something wrong, the misunderstood word and all possible meanings was read out from the dictionary and I had to define it for each meaning and write sentences using it. The whole process took about two hours and I hated it. It gave me a splitting headache. 'Sessions one and two. During these early sessions I didn't experience strong negative reactions to the auditing. My reactions were more of amazement. I found it difficult to take seriously what was happening. I was being subjected to extremely monotonous processes ...the auditor with a straight face, and for such a long time. Many thoughts passed through my mind - how the auditor sounded like a robot - how ugly he was close to - how they were trying to "brainwash" me - how much longer would I have to be in the room doing the same thing over and over again. I also kept having uncontrollable fits of laughter at how ridiculous the situation was. The auditing hadn't really started having a deep-down effect on me at this stage. I wasn't yet vulnerable. A. You look at that wall. S.H. [*uncontrollable laughter*] A. OK. What's happened? S.H. I just think you're so funny. A. Thanks for telling me. We'll carry on....You look at that wall. S.H. [*more laughter*] A. You look at that wail. 'This illustrates the way in which the individual is suppressed during the sessions. If a comment or question is raised it is acknowledged by the auditor with "OK" or "Thanks for telling me" and the commands begin again. Commands are run virtually all the time. It is not 42 A RELIGIOUS TECHNOLOGY possible to get answers from the auditor about what is happening during a session. (The Church of Scientology would acknowledge that this is correct. Standard Tech means that the exact programme laid down by Hubbard must be followed.) If physical pain or discomfort develops it is not possible to take a break or talk about it. The idea is to carry on with what brought it about in the first place. A. Give me that hand. S.H. I've got a headache. A. OK. Thanks for telling me about it, but the best thing to do is to carry on and you let me know how it goes. Give me that hand. 'CCH 1 was then repeated four times before: S.H. I was thinking that it's only the best thing to carry on for you, 'cos I've got the headache and you haven't. A. Right. You see, what happens is that in Dianetics and Scientology processes there's a rule that what turns it on turns it off. So if the process has turned this on, then if we just go on, then you should find it will go. Give me that hand. 'CCH 1 was then repeated another six times, CCH 2 four times, then I came out with the source of my headache: S.H. That's what gives me a headache. That wall. A. Right. Thanks for telling me. 'After going through CCH 2 another ten times the headache went away, only to come back and I was told that I could take only a half-hour break instead of the usual hour. I suddenly became really frightened. I was afraid that any more of these sessions would break me down and that I would become "brain-washed". S.H. I want to tell you that I don't find it frustrating any more and that I did before and that it doesn't give me a headache any more.... A. OK. That's good. Thanks for telling me.' Sarah was now having disturbed nights of sleep. She asked some of the friendlier students at Saint Hill what the 'cognition' was which she was supposed to experience because if she could reach it, then her sessions would be at an end. Mostly they said, 'Oh yes, we felt like that too. Don't worry, you'll get it. It's really great.' Their laughter from 'the other side of the fence', as Sarah puts it, triggered her next stage 43 RELIGION INC. of reaction - rage. She became rebellious. In the next session she told her auditor that she wondered what it was like to be in prison. Shortly afterwards he terminated the session. Sarah became even more antagonistic towards the auditing when she was told that she had to complete this until the desired result was achieved, before she would be allowed to move onto the practical side of the TR course. It was as if she was being forced to take auditing, which she felt was more likely to break down her resistance, before she could get what she wanted. The TRs were the carrot and the auditing the stick. She was put on an E-Meter, which has often been compared to a lie detector, and asked the question which had been put to her at every session, viz: 'What are your feelings about Scientology?' She said that while there were good points there were also bad ones and that she felt Scientology did not really attract her. From then on, Sarah Hogge was kept waiting for long periods of time. The appointments set up with officials to sort out her 'problem' were not kept. She suspected the bureaucracy was being used against her. Eventually the Ethics Officer told her that she was PTS, a Potential Trouble Source, someone who is hostile to Scientology. She finally left frustrated and confused, realizing that the processes had set up tensions within her that undermined her objectivity. 'The more sessions I had the more emotional and unbalanced I became...I either cried or felt like crying a lot. I felt that I was the victim of something that was beyond my control.' The Church of Scientology would argue that it is impossible to be audited and simultaneously to observe the process without destroying the effect. This is probably a valid point, but it does not remove the unease which these repetitive drills must cause in anyone who is familiar with methods of mind control. As we shall see in Chapter 6, psychiatrists argue that while auditing is not strictly the same as hypnosis and auditors use 'cancellation' statements at the end of a session, the end effect can be very similar. Flattening the 'buttons', constant repetition of apparently meaningless actions, the authoritarian context in which the sessions take place, all contribute to this picture. The cycle of emotions through which Sarah Hogge moved is one in which curiosity does not kill the cat but ensures that it eventually ends up eating out of the hand that feeds it. Biting that hand is not tolerated ...It does not breed zombies but it ensures control. Doubts, dissents, distaste for any part of the 'tech', are firmly and systematically suppressed. Alyson was recommended to have the Purification Rundown, a 44 A RELIGIOUS TECHNOLOGY programme which prescribes a diet of vitamins and sauna baths. A glossy booklet (*Purification: An Illustrated Answer to Drugs, Bridge Publications*, 1984) makes the claim that many people have experienced the effects of radiation sickness during the sauna stage and past sunburns have reappeared, only to vanish for ever as they churned their way through the course. However, the booklet insists that the exact prescriptions must be followed and of course these are only available to those who pay for the course (cost L1,284 inc VAT). The Purification Rundown was developed by Hubbard allegedly after studying all the latest literature on vitamins and callisthenics. There is nothing revolutionary about using vitamins, exercise and healthy pursuits to improve health, but it casts doubt on the bona fide of Scientology, whose proclaimed purpose is to help the unhealthy and the addict achieve a better life, that it only spreads such knowledge at a cost. Critics point out that the programme has not been shown to be any more efficacious than simple diet and exercise and its claims are bogus. In some cases (like that of diabetic Alyson), it can lead to actual harm because it makes the patient conform to the system, not the other way round. There is also the system of 'assists': touch assist; contact assist; and Dianetic assist. These are used on 'somatics' or illness in the body which can be affected by treating the mind. Pain can be diverted by using the touch assist. A finger is placed on the spot where pain is felt and repeated questions: 'Can you feel my finger? Thank you' are made until the pain is lessened. It is an imaginative process. Contact assist means taking the person physically back to the spot where an injury occurred. An electric-shock victim is asked to grasp the spot where he received the shock (current now switched off, of course) and this results in a discharge of the 'engram' which he received from the incident. Dianetic assist is running the person through the incident on an E-Meter. I do not doubt that these psychosomatic processes often result in a placebo effect. In other words, if the patients think they are getting better, they do improve - and I would not wish to quarrel with that. But in the 1974 HCOB on the subject, there are pieces of nonsense such as this: 'There is a balance of the nerve energy on the body of 12 nerve channels going up and down the spine. The type of energy in the body travels at 10ft. a second. The energy from a shock will make a standing wave in the body. The brain is a shock cushion, that is all. It absorbs the shock from large amount of energy. The neuron-synapse is a disconnection.' It is redolent of the quackery and the pseudo-science which gurus perpetrate on gullible followers. One 45 RELIGION INC. cannot help feeling that Hubbard's megalomania was such that he could not humble himself to accept the advances in science achieved by others more competent than himself. The science-fiction writer had to invent his own system in which he always carried off the Nobel Prize. By far the most sinister of Scientology exercises are given to those further up the Bridge, who are asked to devise tactics to use in response to enemies of the church. The basic theories and TRs of the 'Student Hat' have been turned into a bond between the individual and the Church of Scientology which demands that they respond to attacks on Scientology with ruthless counter-attacks. The infamous 'Fair Game' doctrine, which declared that enemies of Scientology could be 'tricked, cheated, lied to, sued or destroyed', was but one manifestation of this. Typical of the Church of Scientology's attitude to outside criticism was the HCO Policy Letter of 25 February 1966 which described how to react to attacks on Scientology by feeding counter 'black propaganda' about the attackers to the Press. There is also the HCO *Manual of justice* written by Hubbard which outlines procedures to be used in dealing with the media or enemies and includes the spine-chilling phrase: 'There are men dead because they attacked us - for instance, Dr Joe Winter. He simply realized what he did and died. There are men bankrupt because they attacked Us...' The same booklet outlines the procedure to be followed for the 'entheta' Press who write hostile articles. 'Hire a private detective of a national-type firm to investigate the *writer*, not the magazine, and get any criminal or Communist background the man has....Have your lawyers or solicitors write the magazine threatening a suit. (Hardly ever permit a real suit - they're more of a nuisance to you than they are worth)...Use the data you got from the detective at long last to write the author of the article a very tantalizing letter. Don't give him your data...Just tell him you know something very interesting about him and wouldn't he like to come in and talk about it. (If he comes ask him to sign a confession of collusion and slander - people at that level often will, just to commit suicide - and publish it in a paid ad in a paper if you get it.) Chances are he won't arrive, but he'll sure shudder into silence.' This version of 'an eye for an eye' written by Hubbard has the distinction of incorporating a malevolent mixture of blackmail and vindictiveness. No wonder that someone from the Church of Scientology has written 'Confidential - for HCO personnel only' on my copy of the manual. It is hardly a work to which a religious organization might normally wish to lay claim. * * * 46 A RELIGIOUS TECHNOLOGY Far from the imposing manor of Saint Hill, in the midst of the Grampian Mountains in Scotland lies an equally, if not more, striking country house set in acres of woodland with walled gardens and extensive lawns stretching out in front of the imposing spired facade of the main building, which is nothing less than a castle in the Scottish baronian style. This is Candacraig House, Strathdon, built and furnished with riches from the Far East. Until recently it was the headquarters of a counter movement within Scientology. Its main purpose was to attract students who would study the upper levels of Scientology outside the church organization. The charges were cheaper and although those running the Advanced Ability Center, as they called it, believed in Hubbard's technology, they had broken with the Church of Scientology. They were 'squirrels' - people who had chosen to follow modified 'tech'. The moving spirit behind the Center was a businessman in his mid-thirties, Robin Scott, a history graduate of Oxford University who had come across Scientology as an undergraduate and joined the staff of the Church of Scientology in 1973. He met his attractive wife Adrienne in the Sea Organization and they have three vivacious children. But in 1978 he protested about the way some things were being done at Saint Hill. He was summoned for a 'Sec-Check', a compulsory session on an E-Meter to check his 'security' rating. The needle showed 'rock slam' and proved to his interrogators that he was harbouring hostile thoughts. The 'Sec-Check' involves a long list of questions including 'Do you harbour any hostile thoughts towards the Church of Scientology? L. Ron Hubbard? Your org?' A needle reaction on these questions is tantamount to a confession of guilt, Robin Scott was required to sign a confession of his 'crimes'. He became a travel courier and was presented with a 'freeloader bill' of L40,000 for the auditing he had received while a staff member. However, Robin Scott requested a 'Comm Ev' or Committee of Evidence, which is like a court martial conducted by the Church of Scientology to review discipline cases, and he was reinstated. Three years later he left for good and together with his wife was declared a 'Suppressive Person' or one who seeks to damage Scientology. The Scotts decided that they wanted to fulfil the ideals of Scientology as they still saw them and bought Candacraig. Robin Scott had several business interests and even if Candacraig was only charging a fraction of official Church of Scientology rates he thought that the books would balance. He found, however, that the confession he had made after the Sec-Check was being used against him. This was one 47 RELIGION INC. of the reasons which had made Adrienne Scott want to leave when she worked in the personnel department at Saint Hill. She had been asked then to go through files which might contain admissions of drug offences, homosexuality or even felonies and to 'get the dirt' on other members of the church. When she refused, she had been labelled a 'non-compliant junior'. A lawsuit was taken out by the Church of Scientology against Robin Scott in an attempt to shut down Candacraig as an Advanced Ability Center. One factor stopped Candacraig taking off. It lacked the written materials of the highest levels of the OT courses. This was when Robin Scott made what in retrospect he now considers was a big mistake. He resolved along with others to steal them. Knowing that he and his group would be well-known at Saint Hill and instantly recognized as SPs, they planned their coup at a high-ranking Church of Scientology establishment in Europe, in Copenhagen. Early on the morning of 9 December 1983, Robin Scott picked up Morag Bellmaine and Ron Lawley in East Grinstead and set off for Copenhagen in his Volvo. They drove to the Scientology Advanced Organization for Europe and Africa (designated AOSH EU & AF in the paramilitary terminology of the Church of Scientology) at number 6 Jernbanegade. Lawley and Bellmaine emerged from the car dressed in the Sea Organization Class A uniform, wearing the insignia of senior officials of the Church of Scientology. (They left Robin Scott in the car with its engine running.) They presented themselves as missionaires from the Religious Technology Center (RTC) and told the Copenhagen officials that they had come to check on standards of technical delivery of Scientology counselling at the org. They were given a private room where, upon request, the 'New Era Dianetics for OTs' materials were delivered to them. Morag Bellmaine put these in her handbag and they hurried out of the org and drove off in Robin Scott's Volvo. Back at Candacraig, in the converted stables block, the Scotts constructed the classrooms which they hoped would become a purified Saint Hill to replace Hubbard's HQ. But in March the following year, the Church of Scientology played a cunning card. A man telephoned Robin Scott saying that he was wealthy and interested in pursuing upper levels of counselling. He was en route through Europe. Could they perhaps meet at Coperhagen airport? Robin Scott agreed. But when his plane touched down on Danish soil, the police, together with the officials from AOSH EU & AF, were waiting. They identified him and he was arrested and taken to the cells accused of theft. It had 48 A RELIGIOUS TECHNOLOGY been a clever set-up and the Danish police had co-operated because theft was involved, although subsequently the Danish court took a different view of the value of the materials which the Church of Scientology had claimed were worth over a quarter of a million dollars. Robin Scott served a short jail sentence of one month and returned, much chastened, to Candacraig. *** Candacraig attracted clients who were accommodated in the sumptuous state rooms with four-poster beds installed by the Wallace family from whom Scott bought the house for L110,000. It was more luxurious than the rice-and-beans regime at Saint Hill, but the Scotts were specializing in up-market clientele. Scott continued to run his business in Aberdeen, which specialized in drilling concrete. The locals were suspicious and in August 1984 the Lonach Highlanders, in celebrating one of the colourful festivals of Deeside, gave Candacraig a wide berth, refusing to stop there for a traditional Wallace dram (or toast) because of the Scientology connection. But it was not being misunderstood by the locals which worried Scott most. The flow of clients was diminishing, as was his fervour for the tech of Ron Hubbard. He resolved to sell Candacraig and close down the centre. When I called in the summer of 1985 the course-rooms were empty and the Scott family were preparing to leave. Robin Scott was by now deeply disillusioned with even the upper-level materials which had caused him so much hassle. He now regarded them as 'mainly fraudulent and harmful'. They were surrounded by hype and mystique within Scientology. They were supposed to contain the secrets of the universe, and to be so explosive that anyone reading them without being properly prepared could die! This shroud of mystery served several purposes. It was a superb marketing gimmick. The OT aspirant felt he was getting something really special. Secondly, the build-up to these revelations created an atmosphere of credulity and conspiratorial secrecy which was a disincentive to anyone who might want to cry that they were simply hokum and that 'Emperor Ron' had no clothes. Third, even if after going OT the students had doubts about the validity of the material, the vows of secrecy ensured that an objective analysis of the material was not possible. Robin Scott decided to lift the veil of secrecy and to go public. 'It is high time the whole fraud perpetrated by Ron Hubbard and the Church of Scientology was more fully and clearly exposed. Although I don't welcome the personal attacks on me that will undoubtedly follow, I consider it well worthwhile if we can get this 49 RELIGION INC. whole sordid affair out in the public knowledge, so that vulnerable people will no longer be exploited by the vicious and unpleasant monster that Ron Hubbard created with his organization - little wonder he ended up in hiding,' Scott now says. I was delighted that he chose me to be one of the first to see behind the curtain and felt no sense of impending doom as I descended from my baronial bedroom with its four-poster bed to the study where I was to be shown the infamous OT documents. Indeed, when I read the first page of OT III in Hubbard's own writing, the overwhelming temptation was to giggle. OT I and OT II are regarded as preparatory actions for OT III (the 'Wall of Fire', a past trauma so horrendous that anyone trying to absorb it without Ron's guiding light would die of pneumonia). Robin Scott calls OT II 'about a hundred pages of gobbeldy gook', so I started with OT III. It reads like science-fiction cosmology. Seventy-five million years ago there was a galactic confederation consisting of seventy-six planets which had an over-population problem. The head of the confederation was named Xenu and he resolved that he would entice the entire population of the confederacy to Earth (called Teegeeach) and blow them up. He did this by popping nuclear bombs into twenty volcanoes and wiped them out. The individual spirits or thetans were thus deprived of their bodies and were collected, frozen in a substance like antifreeze, and packaged in boxes known as clusters. Thus there are billions of disembodied thetans and clusters hanging around earth, too severely shaken up by this incident to control a physical body by themselves, so they cling to life by parasiting on human beings. However, these Body Thetans (BTs) and clusters cause undesirable mental and physical conditions in the human being to which they cling and the route to well-being and happiness lies in removing them. This is achieved by auditing a person back down the 'time-track' to the moment these psychic limpets attached themselves, and then discharging them. This can be a lengthy process and Robin Scott told me of one wealthy man he knew who had worked his way through a million dollars in buying 600 hours of auditing. Contacting the BTs is done telepathically and they are then guided back down the time-track to the moment seventy-five million years ago when Xenu vaporized them, which is known as Incident 2. The principle is the same as in auditing an 'engram' out of a preclear. The auditor commands the person to 'recall that incident' and leads him through it, supposedly discharging the trauma associated with it. Once through Incident 2 the BT can roam off and pick up a body 50 A RELIGIOUS TECHNOLOGY to resume the karmic cycle of reincarnations like the rest of us. The idea was that the OT and the BT mutually benefited and it was whispered that OTs derived all kinds of psychic powers once they had shaken off the BTs. They could levitate, have out-of-body experiences at will and were free from any manner of ailment, including vulnerability to atomic radiation. I say whisper because when questioned about these claims, Church of Scientology officials will politely tell you that this might have happened to some as a by-product but it is not the aim, nor a necessary by-product, of going OT. Of course, Incident 2 raises the question of what constituted Incident 1. This is the very beginning of the Universe itself which had been vouchsafed to Ron in a revelation. It, too, created trauma and the reason offered for the lack of total success with BTs was that they needed to be taken further back down the time-track to Incident 1, which is dated four quadrillion years ago. Here in Hubbard's words is Incident 1: 'Loud snap. Waves of light. Chariot comes out, blows horn, comes close. Shattering series of snaps, Cherub fades back (retreats). Blackness dumped on thetan.' This is the creation of the world according to Hubbard, the Big Bang which ended for me not with a whimper but with a giggle that anyone could sit down and buy this sci-fi fantasy for thousands of dollars. Scott explains the gullibility of intelligent people like himself as being due to success in using the earlier parts of the technology ('wins' or 'gains', as they are known), so that the critical faculty is dimmed as one gets higher up the Bridge. But there were many who were paying through the nose for this counselling and who were not getting 'wins'. They sometimes had to worry about money with which to continue auditing and such worries were not supposed to afflict OTs. Before doubts about OT III and above began to spread, in 1978 Hubbard issued 'New Era Dianetics for OTs' which was like many a brand of washing-powder - the 'new improved' version was launched amid much hype and trumpeting (no cherubs presumably). Like the launch of a commercial product, the effect was to re-stimulate sales. These new levels were known as NOTs and were nothing, admits Robin Scott, but a revamped version of OT III'. There were apparently more subtle layers of BTs and of clusters and these new procedures were designed to cope with them. A Solo NOTs level was introduced for several thousand more dollars, which enabled the person to work away at his clusters (with a case supervisor in the background to check whether he ought to be doing more). By 1985 only one person had reached OT VIII. 51 RELIGION INC. If the levels up to 'Clear' are easier to understand as a form of psychotherapy rather than as a religion, the OT levels reveal Scientology as a religion with a cosmology, albeit a strange one which sounds like the product of a science-fiction writer, which is, of course, what Ron Hubbard was. But there are other more sinister elements. There is the appeal to the age-old gnostic heresy: i.e. you make spiritual progress by working (or, in the case of the Church of Scientology, buying) your way up a ladder and can look down on those beneath. There is the occultist element. What can BTs and clusters be but demons? Imperfection in the individual is ascribed to the influence of these psychic forces, which then require to be 'exorcized'. This lays the basis of dissociation of personality and occult practices which are the very opposite of religion, which works for a whole, integrated personality. Just as Scientology's doctrines of 'Fair Game' and 'Suppressive Persons' sprang out of the paranoia of Ron Hubbard, so we must look to his schizoid personality for the creation of such a theology. The top-secret materials have also been the subject of controversy since I got my peep into Creation according to Hubbard. In November 1985, the OT materials were introduced into court as part of a civil case brought by former Church of Scientologist Larry Wollersheim against the church. Although Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Alfred Margolis allowed the evidence, 1,500 Scientologists crammed the court buildings, the *Los Angeles Times* reported, to ensure that the materials were not subject to public scrutiny. The Scientologists' attorney argued that unsealing the documents 'amounts to the biggest threat to this religion so far'. Although the court resealed the documents after the evidence had been heard, the *Los Angeles Times* published a similar account to the one I have given (although, perhaps because of differences in reading Hubbard's spidery writing, they call the Confederation ruler Xemu, not Xenu). So far, none of the dire consequences of catching pneumonia have befallen those who were exposed 'illicitly' to the OT materials. I hope after reading this chapter, you will remain just as exempt from the curse. 52 3 Life on the Ocean Wave I PUSHED open the door of the decaying block of flats not far from Waterloo Station. The narrow hallway opened onto a room littered with papers and letters and ashtrays filled with cigarette ends. The summer afternoon air was stale and sour and the room was filthy. In the corner stood a single bed with a grubby white quilt. Sitting on it, clutching a large vodka and orange juice, was Scientology's very first 'Clear'. 'This place is just a dump,' said John McMaster. His voice had a theatrical ring about it. His hair was white and his face blotchy around the bright eyes which studied me intently. His hand swept to a chair where he bade me be seated. The man who had once been called 'the magician of the E-Meter' and the first 'Pope of Scientology' by Hubbard himself, is now a frail and emaciated figure. Clutching the vodka and orange, he sipped as he talked, travelling back down the time-track to the days as a young medical student in South Africa when his stepmother first introduced him to Scientology. 'It wasn't a religion then,' he said with some distaste. 'My stepmother used it as a weapon. I told her it was just a tool. That's what it is, a tool.' The tensions grew with his stepmother as John McMaster quit medical school and learned more about how to work the E-Meter. His father reluctantly bought him a one-way ticket to Saint Hill where John excelled as an auditor without ever meeting Hubbard. Then in March 1965 Hubbard offered him a key post. The next two years were boom ones for Saint Hill. With only six staff in early 1965 and a turnover of L1,490 per week, McMaster helped boost this sevenfold within a year. On St Valentine's Day 1966 Hubbard issued a promulgation that the world's first Scientology 'Clear' had been achieved. McMaster was in Los Angeles at the time 53 RELIGION INC. and was recalled to Saint Hill to undergo checks to ascertain if he really had passed the test. Hubbard's previous announcements of Dianetics 'Clears' had proved to be somewhat premature and did not stand up to scrutiny. But McMaster passed. On 9 March 1966 Anton James wrote to Hubbard, 'Dear Ron, It's with the greatest joy and happiness that I have to report to you that John McMaster has passed the "Clear" check and no doubt exists that he has erased his bank completely and it's gone. There is no meter reaction at all...his presence in the environment brings about a calmness and safety .' McMaster became a legend among the devoted followers of the 'tech'. The incarnate Clear's speaking style charmed thousands and his touch on the E-Meter brought people like author William Burroughs to be audited by him. Hubbard charged L2,500 for processing, with L50 for fifty hours with McMaster, who was receiving L4 per week. Then he upped it to L250 as McMaster's prowess grew. While he was enjoying the limelight and the success, McMaster didn't look too carefully at Hubbard's flaws. But in the sixties Hubbard was anxious to expand Scientology into Africa. Barred from South Africa, although there were Scientology centres there, he fixed on Rhodesia, and the Boomiehills Hotel. McMaster remembers a heavy-handed attempt by Hubbard to influence Prime Minister Ian Smith while he was living in Alexander Park in Salisbury. Ron had his chauffeur drive him out in his yellow Pontiac with two bottles of pink champagne, which he had to leave with the butler because Mrs Smith would not receive him. 'There are things like protocol, you know, just general decency,' says McMaster. 'You don't just barge in on somebody like a tramp steamer misdocking. All these nuances of understanding, I began to realize, he didn't have.' With some distaste John McMaster adds, 'He told me Ian Smith was going to be shot because he was a "Suppressive". I now have no comment. But the real reason that Hubbard was kicked out of Rhodesia was that his cheques bounced.' *** In the mid-sixties doors started closing in the Scientologists' faces all over the world. Whether it was from accident or design, most of the Church of Scientology target areas were in the old British Commonwealth - Australia, New Zealand, South Africa. The first door to slam was in Victoria where, in 1965, a Board of Inquiry persuaded the State legislature to pass the Psychological Practices Act which effectively outlawed Scientology in Victoria. Within half 54 LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE an hour, the Australian police had raided the Melbourne org and confiscated some 4,000 documents, personal files and books. It was now punishable by a fine of $400 to use an E-Meter unless a trained psychologist and it became a criminal offence to receive or teach Scientology materials. The newspaper headlines at the time in Australia are a telegrammatic way of conveying the charges in the report which had been prepared by Mr Kevin Anderson QC.2 Scientology was variously held out as 'perverted', 'a form of blackmail', 'caused delusions', 'exploited anxiety', 'a menace', 'product of an unsound mind'. This last charge referred to the diagnosis of Hubbard from a distance by Dr E. Cunningham Crax, chairman of Victoria's Mental Health Authority, who gave evidence to the Board of Inquiry that Hubbard was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. One cannot help feeling sympathy for Scientology, which seemed to be condemned without a proper hearing, if one reads the account of the episode in Garrison's *The Hidden Story of Scientology*, He tells how Hubbard had volunteered to testify to the Board if they paid his expenses, but it is difficult to accept the bona fide of this when one reads that Garrison congratulated Hubbard on his good sense in failing to turn up in person when the Australian legal profession began discussing whether he could be charged with fraud. The South African government was considering holding a similar Inquiry into Scientology in 1966 and McMaster was dispatched by Hubbard to trouble-shoot. The Inquiry was not held until 1969, by which time a banning order had been brought in the UK preventing leaders of Scientology from entering Britain. (It remained in force until 1980, although a report by Sir John Foster to Parliament written in 1970 and published in 1971, recommended the ban be lifted.)3 To summarize, the mid-sixties were a turning point for Scientology. As it expanded into Anglo-Saxon corners of the globe, it met increasing hostility from governments and the medical profession. The reaction to this from Hubbard was increased paranoia and a series of poisonous and authoritarian HCOBs poured from his pen: 26 AUGUST 1965: The Ethics E-Meter check allowed the Ethics Officer (whose office and function had been introduced in May and June respectively) 'at any time (to) call in any staff member 1 on 7 December 1965. 2,3 *See pages 63-4* 55 RELIGION INC. and do an Ethics E-Meter check...no question is asked...the EO records the position of the tone arm and the needle'. 5 AUGUST 1965: The main characteristics of a Suppressive Person (SP) were defined and in December the 'handling' of the PTS and the suppressive group was outlined. 6 MARCH 1966: Rewards and Penalties. How to handle Personnel and ethics matters. 27 SEPTEMBER 1966: The 'anti-social personality', the 'anti- Scientologist'. On and on they came, Hubbard's pen as prolific in defining, attacking, demanding as it had always been in churning out science-fiction. By September 1967 he had even defined a state of 'non-existence' for those who ran foul of his tyrannical paranoia. 'Must wear old clothes. May not bathe. Women must not wear make-up or have hair-dos. Men may not shave. No lunch-hour is given and such persons are not expected to leave the premises. Lowest pay with no bonuses.' On 1 October 1967 'Uses of Orgs' declared, 'There are two uses to which an org can be put: (1) To forward the advance of self and all dynamics towards total survival. (2) To use the great power and control of an org to defend oneself.' This was followed on 16 October by 'How to Detect SPs as an Administrator' and on 18 October by 'Penalties for Lower Conditions'. These included 'Suspension of pay and a dirty grey rag on left arm, and day and night confinement to org premises. TREASON: Black mark on left cheek.' An enemy of Scientology became by definition a 'Suppressive Person' and thus was 'Fair Game': 'May be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologists.' The Church of Scientology points out that Fair Game was cancelled by Hubbard in 1968, but it should be noted that he did this because it was causing adverse public relations, not because it was undesirable, and he added that it did not cancel any policy on the treatment or handling of a SP. In other words, business as before - and the 'business', dirty tricks, spreading false information about critics, blackmail and threats - had been pretty busy and grisly until that point. If someone was in contact with a Suppressive Person they were required to 'disconnect' from them by writing a letter, At one time it was accepted practice to publish letters of disconnection in the *Auditor* magazine, and Wallis quotes one disquieting example of a member of a family writing such a letter: 56 LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE I, Heath Douglas Creer, do swear that I disavow and thoroughly disassociate myself from any covertly or overtly planned association with J. Roscoe Creer and Isabel Hodge Creer or anyone demonstrably guilty of SP acts as described in HC Policy Letters March '65. I understand that any breach of the above pledge will result in me being declared a Suppressive Person. *Signed*, H.D. Creer. *** It was little wonder that Scientology acquired a reputation for being destructive of family bonds. What is probably more accurate is that Scientology is no more destructive of family connections than it is of relationships in general. What is more subtle is that once a person has made his whole life centre round the Church of Scientology, then being 'declared' (which is the verb for becoming a SP), poses a terrible threat of losing friends, job, home and perhaps family all at once. It is a chillingly effective tool for bringing dissenting voices into line. 'Out-ethics' are graded from errors to high crimes. The latter were more concerned with treason against the org itself, but ethics orders were issued holus bolus for the most trivial incidents. Failure to comply escalated the penalties and the non-conformist could soon find himself facing a Sec-Check prior to a Committee of Evidence (Comm Ev). Among the questions asked on Sec-Checks were: 'Are you a pervert? Are you guilty of any major crimes in this lifetime? Have you been sent here knowingly to injure Scientology? Are you, or have you ever been, a Communist? Those familiar with the McCarthy witch-hunts of the early fifties will recognize the last question. But it should also be remembered that not only was the interviewee in a stressful situation but he or she was on meter and the E-Meter, as we have seen, has been compared in function closely to that of a lie-detector. In other words, a Sec-Check was a form of interrogation. *** McMaster, who had been given the role of Scientology's unofficial ambassador to the United Nations, a grandiose gesture in keeping with Hubbard's pretensions, was appointed Pope of Scientology in August 1966, an event he recalls with derision. 'When Hubbard said to me, "I'm declaring you the first Pope", I thought he was joking. For me it was *never* a church. I did wear a ministerial collar at the UN and they'd say to me, "Oh, hello, Father McMaster - who would you like to see today?" and there was no problem. I was completely trusted.' Not by Hubbard, however, Even McMaster was removed from his post 57 RELIGION INC. in September 1967, put in a state of 'non-existence' and forced to retrain. In March 1985, McMaster had the satisfaction of returning to the stage where he was once lionized as a 'world-famous spiritual lecturer'. His audience was a new generation of Scientologists who had broken with the church. But McMaster is unaffected by this revived adulation. He returned to his shabby flat in Waterloo just as disenchanted with Scientology as