Inside Scientology (11 page)

It would be wrong to cast Hubbard solely as a crank. One of Hubbard's acolytes, Cyril Vosper, later wrote of Hubbard's "incredible dynamism, a disarming, magnetic and overwhelming personality"
that was apparent even in private moments. Wandering through Saint Hill on a Sunday morning, it wasn't unusual to run into the founder, who would unfailingly stop to chat. Though Hubbard was then in his fifties, "a breathtaking stream of ideas and new projects poured from him with youthful enthusiasm," wrote Vosper. "His brilliant red hair and broad smile, his benign authority, made it not difficult to believe that here was the new Messiah. The twentieth-century, science-orientated, super genius on whose broad shoulders and intellect the fate of the world rested. Yet not so far removed from the plain man as to be unable to stand and gossip while taking snapshots with his Leica."

It was this unique combination of majesty and accessibility that allowed Hubbard to thrive as a leader, inspiring both faith and fealty. As Russell Miller observed, "Scientology flourished in the post-war era of protest and uncertainty when young people were searching for a sense of belonging or meaning to their lives. Hubbard offered both, promised answers and nurtured an inner-group feeling of exclusiveness which separated Scientologists from the real world. Comforted by a sense of esoteric knowledge, of exaltation and self-absorption, they were ready to follow Ron through the very gates of Hell if need be."
Miller's view is common among the numerous critical biographers, who tend to argue that it was the founder's personality, including his bouts of rage and paranoia, that elevated Scientology to something more than an obscure pseudo-scientific self-help program. That Hubbard was a forceful, brilliant, and charismatic presence is undeniable. But the ideas Hubbard put forth in his new spiritual technology should not be discounted, nor should the way in which he presented them.

Scientologists are taught to believe that every single word of their doctrine was written by and conceived of by the founder. In truth, most of Hubbard's ideas appear to have been taken or adapted from a wide variety of sources, ranging from Freud and Aleister Crowley to Lao Tzu and various Buddhist masters, and, quite possibly, to William Sargant, a British psychiatrist who wrote extensively about abreactive therapy and brainwashing in his 1957 book,
Battle for the Mind.
Where Hubbard did prove original, however, was in shrewdly boiling down those teachings, packaging them as both mental health technology and scientifically applied religious philosophy, and selling them to a society that was increasingly fixated on both.

As a product, Scientology embodied different things to different people. Like those of other churches, its ministers, most of whom were male, wore collars (in public, though not always within the orgs themselves) and adopted the sober mien thought to be typical of men of the cloth. The movement embraced standard ethical and moral themes. Like many fundamentalist Christian movements, Scientology opposed homosexuality and other forms of "sexual perversion." Like numerous mainline Christian sects, it was enthusiastically materialistic and staunchly anti-Communist. Idealists were drawn to Scientology because of its stated humanitarian goals. From the earliest days of Dianetics, Hubbard spoke of it as a direct response to the creation of weapons of mass destruction. "Man is now faced ... with weapons so powerful that man himself might vanish from the earth," he wrote in
Dianetics.
"There is no problem in the control of these weapons ... The problem is in the control of man."

Scientology simultaneously reflected the postwar era's optimism and its darkest and most profound anxieties. The same, perhaps, could be said for Hubbard himself, who often seemed to embody two distinct individuals: the kind and benevolent "Friend of Man," as Scientologists would later call him, and the paranoid and increasingly reclusive narcissist. He was amusing, kind, generous, and often brilliant, but also dismissive, punishing, and, at his worst, cruel.

By the mid-1960s, Hubbard had delivered thousands of lectures and written innumerable policy letters and bulletins that spelled out the essential code of Scientology. With the help of his many researchers, he had designed the vast majority of Scientology's auditing processes, which he tended to amend each year. Saint Hill, the hub of worldwide operations, was the buzzing factory of Scientology. Mail delivery trucks would arrive each day and deposit stacks of letters, most addressed to Hubbard himself. Hubbard referred to the daily-mail delivery bags as "the Santa Claus pack."

In 1964, Hubbard granted his first interview in several years to James Phelan, a reporter for the
Saturday Evening Post.
At the time, this magazine was considered second only to
Life
in terms of importance and pride of place on most American coffee tables. A man who "was always at pains to project the image of a benefactor to mankind," as one former Saint Hill associate recalled, Hubbard was flattered and hoped the story would help legitimize him, at long last, to mainstream Americans.

Phelan came to Saint Hill, toured the estate, and attended a few of Hubbard's lectures, where the founder strutted like a peacock. "He was excited, he was laughing, he was joking, he was huge," Alan Walter recalled. "Photographers were in the audience taking pictures of us. And he was as high as a kite on all of that."

In private talks with Phelan, Hubbard bragged that a new Scientology office opened "somewhere in the world ... every three days"—though he would not produce an exact number of members because "it doubles every six months." He described himself as company man. "I control the operation as a general manager would control any operation of a company," he said. He insisted he did not profit from Scientology, drawing a "token salary" of $70 per week. In general, he maintained, Scientology was a "labor of love."

Phelan's article appeared in March. Contrary to the long-awaited acknowledgment of his accomplishments that Hubbard had hoped it would be, the story was a takedown of Scientology and its founder. Phelan made fun of Scientology's teachings and noted that Hubbard lacked credentials. "Records show that he enrolled [at George Washington University] in 1930 but never received a degree of any kind. Today, besides his 'Doctor of Scientology,' he appends a Ph.D. to his name. He got it, he says, from Sequoia University. This was a Los Angeles establishment, once housed in a residential dwelling, whose degrees are not recognized by any accredited college or university."

The only difference between Hubbard and an "old-time snake-oil peddler," Phelan wrote, was that "there is nothing old-time about L. Ron Hubbard." (The journalist marveled at the modern Telex machine—the high-speed fax of its day—on Hubbard's desk, and also noted that Hubbard appeared to be well versed in a wide range of scientific topics.) Cagey about church finances, yet obviously enjoying its plentiful fruits, he lived like a self-satisfied squire. At the end of a long day, "the master of Saint Hill Manor rings for his butler Shepheardson, who fetches his afternoon Coke on a tray. If he wishes a bit of air, his chauffeur will wheel out a new American car or the Jaguar, and as he gazes contentedly out over the broad acres of what was once a maharaja's estate, the profound truth of what he says becomes apparent. Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, 'Doctor' of Scientology, may indeed be a man who has this lifetime straightened out." The article meted out mockery of Hubbard in every sentence.

Hubbard was crushed. "That article was a disaster," said Alan Walter. "He'd waited for weeks, expecting all this recognition, and instead he was ridiculed in a major international magazine." And this disgrace only compounded Hubbard's woes. One year earlier, in 1963, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had once again raided Scientology's headquarters in Washington, D.C., this time seizing its inventory of E-meters.
The agency charged that the labels on this equipment made phony claims; they "represent, suggest and imply that the E-meter is adequate and effective for diagnosis, prevention, treatment, detection and elimination of the causes of all mental and nervous disorders and illnesses such as neuroses, psychoses ... arthritis, cancer, stomach ulcers, and radiation burns from atomic bombs, poliomyelitis, the common cold, etc."

This, unlike the Dianazene raid, received significant press attention both in the United States and throughout the English-speaking world. In Victoria, Australia, the FDA's action added fuel to a debate that had been raging for some time over Scientology's physical and mental health benefits. As early as 1960, the Australian Medical Association and its Mental Health Authority had taken a keen interest in Scientology, and a formal board of inquiry would ultimately produce a scathing, 173-page report thoroughly denouncing Scientology and its founder. "If there should be detected in this report a note of unrelieved denunciation of Scientology, it is because the evidence has shown its theories to be fantastic and impossible, its principles perverted and ill-founded, and its techniques debased and harmful," the report concluded. "Scientology is a delusional belief system, based on fiction and fallacies and propagated by falsehood and deception ... Its founder, with the merest smattering of knowledge in various sciences, has built upon the scintilla of his learning a crazy and dangerous edifice."

A careful reader of this report could detect not just ridicule, but fear. Scientology, as the sociologist Roy Wallis would later point out, had great success in the late 1950s and early 1960s, attracting ordinary people who willingly joined its ranks. Yet its ideas were anything but conventional. "For some," Wallis noted, "Scientology's conflict with conventional reality was a
moral
affront."

This view of Scientology—that it was not an innocuous therapy group, but rather a potentially dangerous and highly controlling global racket—in turn set the tone for the evolution of Scientology. It became what some members of the public feared it already was. For all of his life, L. Ron Hubbard, the showman and storyteller, had sought to connect with mainstream culture, only to be rejected and scorned. Certainly, the
Saturday Evening Post
had confirmed his doubts about the media; with one or two exceptions, he would never again allow a journalist to get close to him.

Now, in humiliation, he would withdraw from the world completely and seek revenge. Deeply depressed in the weeks after the story came out, Hubbard stopped socializing with his students, refrained from laughing and telling jokes, and retreated into an increasingly hostile zone from which many believe he never fully emerged. "He just crashed," said Walter. "And after that, he changed. I never saw him laugh after that day. He was just very angry from then on."

In February 1965, Hubbard wrote a seven-page manifesto titled "Keeping Scientology Working." This was his Sermon on the Mount, something Scientologists consider a sacred document, which in future years would serve as both an instruction manual and a rallying call to legions of idealistic believers. In it, Hubbard declared himself the sole creator, or "Source," of Scientology's technology, negating the work done by his many collaborators, and defined his movement as the salvation of the human race. His followers were charged with a divine mission to "hammer out of existence" any philosophy or technique that might compete with his own.

Recognizing a change in climate, a number of individuals left Saint Hill, and Scientology, shortly after reading this document. But those like Walter, who stayed in the church (he did so for another thirteen years), were forced to suppress their own ideas for fear of being denounced as "squirrels." "From that moment on," said Walter, "nobody but L. Ron Hubbard discovered anything."

The long period of experimentation and self-exploration was over, and with it, the entire concept of Scientology as an alternative to psychotherapy or even an innovative spiritual movement. Scientology was now more than that—it was, particularly for those willing to work alongside Hubbard or within his church, a highly regimented parallel universe. In this new world, where L. Ron Hubbard was king, there would be no criticism or snide remarks, no embarrassing revelations about his credentials or lack thereof. In fact there would be no critical thinking at all, for now there was only one form of thought, Hubbardian thought—with which one had affinity, or nothing.

To the uninitiated and the newly enamored, he would remain L. Ron Hubbard, quixotic troubadour, and Scientology a journey of psychological discovery. To his devoted and indoctrinated followers, he would be Source, the Founder, LRH—the inventor who'd used them, willingly, as test subjects. Only Scientology, Hubbard wrote in "Keeping Scientology Working," defined the route out of the labyrinth of human suffering and confusion. He would call that road "The Bridge to Total Freedom." And it would lead to a place few Scientologists could have imagined or suspected.

Do you know that absolutely Standard Tech—complete, utter, hairline, Standard Tech—used in organizations throughout the world, will at least triple the stats of each org within 90 days. Couldn't help it. And if it was really applied in a business-like fashion, and nobody messed it up in any way, shape, or form . . . we might even be able to take the planet within a year. It is hot! Scientology is so much hotter than anybody thinks it is . . . it is fantastic!

—
L. RON HUBBARD, "WELCOME TO CLASS VII
," 1968

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born in 1946, and grew up in the wealthy suburb of Arcadia near Pasadena, California, ten miles northeast of Los Angeles. The son of a prosperous advertising executive, he was a good student and a talented artist who, like many of his peers, was drawn into the social and political counterculture of the 1960s. At the University of Redlands, then a small conservative Baptist college near Riverside, California, where Jeff enrolled in 1965, he became part of a small circle of students who grew their hair long, smoked pot, and made regular sojourns to Los Angeles to take part in anti-war demonstrations. By the winter of 1967, feeling stifled by college, he transferred to the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles (now known as Cal Arts), but stayed only a few months before he decided to drop out of school entirely and strike off on his own.