Let's Sell These People a Piece of Blue Sky: Hubbard, Dianetics and Scientology (4 page)

Hubbard’s ideas have inspired many imitators, and several
contemporary “psycho-technologies” and New Age movements derive from
Scientology (est, Eckancar and Co-counseling, for example).

Any assessment of Scientology is further complicated because
it has demonstrably been the target of harassment. A Tax Court judge admitted
in a ruling that the IRS had investigated Scientologists solely because they
were Scientologists. Governments have panicked and over-reacted: for example,
for several years in three Australian states the very practice of Scientology
was an imprisonable offence.

The secret inner workings of Scientology have long been
zealously guarded, but in 1982, two years after Hubbard disappeared into complete
seclusion, a purge began and the Church began to disintegrate. Over 1,000
long-term Scientologists, many of whom had held important positions within the
Church, were excommunicated and expelled. They were placed under the interdict
of “Disconnection,” whereby other Scientologists were prohibited from
communicating with them in any way. At a rally in San Francisco, young members
of the new management harangued and threatened executives of Scientology’s
franchised “Missions.” While the newly created International Finance Dictator
spoke, his scowling, black-shirted International Finance Police patrolled the
aisles. Huge amounts of money were demanded from the Mission Holders. In the
following weeks, Scientology’s Finance Police swooped down on the Missions
collecting millions of dollars and almost bankrupting the entire network.

Hubbard had styled himself the “Commodore” of his “Sea Organization,”
and, by 1982, the new leaders, some still in their teens, were members of the
“Commodore’s Messenger Organization.” Many of these youngsters had been raised
in Scientology, separated from their parents, originally working as Hubbard’s
personal servants.

Anonymous letters describing incredible events circulated
among Scientologists. We read about Gilman Hot Springs, a 500-acre estate in
south California, surrounded by high fences, patrolled by brown-shirted guards,
and protected by an elaborate and expensive security system. We heard accounts
of bizarre punishments meted out at this supposedly secret headquarters. A
group of senior Church executives had been put on a program where they ran
around a tree in near desert conditions for 12 hours a day, for weeks on end.
Some Scientologists gave accounts of their treatment at the hands of the
International Finance Police, where they had been abused verbally and
physically, sometimes signing over huge amounts of money before coming to their
senses.

During this reign of terror, thousands of Scientologists
left the Church, believing that Hubbard was either dead or under the control of
the Messengers. These new “Independent” practitioners of Scientology were
subjected to prolonged and extensive harassment and litigation. Private
Investigators followed important defectors, sometimes around the clock for
months. The Church widely distributed scandal sheets packed with fabricated
libels concerning defectors.
⁶

The essential question which plagued Scientologists who had
left the Church was whether Hubbard knew what was happening. By the time
Hubbard’s death was announced in January 1986, many Scientologists believed his
body had been deep-frozen for several years. Others believed he was still
alive, that the coroner had been bribed, and that his death had been staged to
escape the net of the Criminal Investigation Branch of the Internal Revenue
Service, which was investigating the transfer of hundreds of millions of
dollars of Church funds into Hubbard’s personal accounts.

As part of its campaign to stem the tide of defectors,
Scientology brought law suits against several former members. In return,
multi-million dollar counter-suits were filed against Scientology. In 1986, a
Los Angeles jury awarded $30 million in damages to a former Church member. On
the last day of 1986, a group of over 400 former members initiated a billion
dollar suit against the Church.

Former highly-placed Hubbard aides broke silence for the
first time. The documentary evidence referred to by Judge Breckenridge pierced
the self-created fantasy of Hubbard’s past. The sinister reality beneath the
smiling mask of the Church of Scientology was at last revealed.

1.
   
Conway & Siegelman,
Snapping,
1st edition, p.161.

2.
   
Conway & Siegelman, “Information Disease”,
Science Digest
, January 1982, p.92
.

3.
   
Judgment in Wards B & G, Royal Courts of Justice, Family Division,
London, 23 July 1984.

4.
   
Memorandum of Intended Decision in Church of Scientology California v.
Gerald Armstrong, Superior Court, Los Angeles County, 22 June 1984, civil case
no. C 420153.

5.
   
Stipulation of Evidence in USA v. Mary Sue Hubbard et al., District
Court, District of Columbia, criminal case no. 78-401.

6.
   
e.g., Sea Organization Executive Directive 2344 International “Story of
a Squirrel: David Mayo”, 20 August 1982.

PART one

“This
is useful knowledge. With it the blind again see, the lame walk, the ill
recover, the insane become sane and the sane become saner. By its use the
thousand abilities Man has sought to recover become his once more.”

—L.
Ron Hubbard,
Scientology: A History of Man
, 1952
¹

Chapter one

“All I have is a voice/To undo the folded
lie”

—WH
Auden

It was 1974 and I was nineteen. I had just returned to
England after a disastrous tour of the South of France only to find that my
girlfriend, with whom I had been living for over a year, had been sleeping with
one of my friends and was going to live with him in New Zealand. A few weeks
later while alone at a friend’s house, I found a copy of Hubbard’s book
Science
of Survival
. After reading 200 pages, I was hooked.

I was impressed by Hubbard’s insistence that his “Dianetics”
was not dependent on faith, but was completely scientific. The book began with
an impressive array of graphs purportedly depicting increases in IQ and
betterment of personality through Dianetics, which appeared to have undergone
extensive testing.

Dianetics claimed to be an extension of Freudian therapy. By
re-experiencing unconfronted traumas it was allegedly possible to unravel the
deep-seated stimulus-response patterns which ruin people’s lives. Hubbard
departed from Freud by denying that sexual repressions were basic to human
aberration. He promised a new and balanced emotional outlook through the
application of Dianetics.

It seemed that Dianetics had been absorbed by Scientology.
Science
of Survival
contained an outdated list of Scientology Churches. Eventually
I found a phone number for the “Birmingham Mission of the Church of
Scientology.” After a few minutes of conversation, the receptionist insisted
that I take a train immediately. About three hours later, after a complicated
journey, I arrived at the “Mission.” It was over a launderette in Moseley Village,
at that time the dowdy home of the Birmingham hippy community.

The receptionist sat behind an old desk at the head of the
steep stairs. It was just after six in the evening, and the rest of the Mission
staff had gone home to take a break before returning for the evening session.
The receptionist was in her early twenties, and had abandoned a career in
teaching to become a full-time Scientologist. She was cheerful and
self-assured, and she looked me straight in the eye. She exuded confidence that
Scientology was the stuff of miracles. I mentioned my interest in Buddhism, so
she gave me a Scientology magazine called “
Advance!
,” which claimed that
Scientology was its modern successor. I was passionately interested, but she
would not trust me to take a copy of Hubbard’s
Dianetics: The Modern Science
of Mental Health
, and pay the next day.

Perhaps to her surprise, I did return the next day and
bought the book. I spent the Christmas season locked away with my misery and
“Dianetics.” The 400 pages took 10 days to read. The book was turgid and
difficult, but I was not interested in Hubbard’s style, I was interested in
Dianetic therapy.

Hubbard claimed to have found the source of all human unhappiness.
Dianetics would eradicate depression, and the seventy percent of all ailments
which Hubbard claimed are mentally generated, or “psychosomatic.” According to
Hubbard’s book, each of us has a stimulus-response mind which records all
trauma. This “Reactive Mind” is hidden from the conscious or “Analytical Mind.”
When elements of an environment resemble those of an earlier traumatic
incident, the Reactive Mind cuts in and enforces irrational behavior upon the
individual. The Reactive Mind is idiotic, and tries to resolve present
situations by regurgitating a jumble of responses from its recording of the
traumatic incident. Failing to see the cause of this irrational behavior, the
Analytical

Mind justifies it, in exactly the way a hypnotized subject
justifies his enactment of implanted suggestions.

According to Hubbard, the deepest personal traumas were
moments of unconsciousness or pain, which he called “engrams.” By relieving
engrams an individual could erase the Reactive Mind and become well-balanced,
happy and completely rational. The earliest engram would have occurred before
birth, and would be the “basic” of all subsequent engrams. Those who had
relieved this original engram, and consequently erased their Reactive Mind,
Hubbard called “Clears.” People receiving Dianetics were “Preclears.” I began
to absorb this elaborate and complex new language.

More recent incidents would have to be relieved before the
Preclear would be capable of reliving his birth and his experiences in the
womb. I was wary of Hubbard’s constant assertion that most parents try to abort
their children, but glossed over it, thinking his initial research must have
been done on rather strange people.

What severe “engrams” had I received? Because so much
emphasis was put on birth and the prenatal period, I asked my mother about her
pregnancy. Her answers horrified me. After an emergency operation to treat a
twisted ovary, the doctor had told her she was pregnant. The doctor said he had
held the evidence (me) in his hand. A very nasty “prenatal engram” indeed;
perhaps explaining my backache, my slight near-sightedness, or my current
intense depression.

I was a romantic teenager, deeply upset by the end of a love
affair. I wanted help and I thought that L. Ron Hubbard could provide that
help. A year before, a Zen teacher had warned me to join only groups where all
the members had something I wanted. The people I met at the Scientology
“Mission” all seemed unusually cheerful. They were confident and positive about
life. Qualities I sorely needed. I had met Moonies, Hare Krishnas, and Children
of God, but Scientologists had an easy cheerfulness, not the hysterical
euphoria I had seen in these “cult” converts.

Within a few weeks, I moved into the house where most of the
Mission staff lived. I asked my Scientologist room-mate if he had any pet-hates.
He smiled broadly and said, “Only wogs.” I was startled, and launched into a
defense of dark-skinned people. He laughed, and explained that “wog” was a
Hubbardism for all “non-Scientologists.” This gave me pause for thought, but I
dismissed it as an unfortunate turn of phrase. I thought that Hubbard probably
did not realize how racially offensive the term is in Great Britain.

I became intrigued by the many claims Hubbard had made about
himself. In the 1930s he had been an explorer. A trained nuclear physicist, he
had applied the rigorous precision of Western science to the profound
philosophy of the East, which he had encountered at first hand in his teens in
China, Tibet and India. One of Freud’s disciples had trained him in
psycho-analysis. During the Second World War Hubbard had distinguished himself
as a squadron commander in the US Navy, sinking U-boats and receiving no less
than 27 medals and awards.
²
The end of the war found him in a
military hospital, “crippled and blinded.”
³
Applying scientific
method to Eastern philosophy, and marrying the results with Freudian analysis,
Hubbard claimed to have cured himself completely. Out of this miracle cure came
Dianetics. Because of his experience of “man’s inhumanity to man”
⁴
in the war, he had continued his research and brought Scientology into being.

The young woman who ran the Scientology Mission was
attractive, intelligent, and bubbling with enthusiasm. She was a “Clear,”
having “erased” her Reactive Mind, and seemed living proof of the efficacy of
the system. The five Mission staff members generated a friendly atmosphere.
They listened to whatever I had to say and steered me towards a more optimistic
state of mind. I was convinced that they were genuinely interested in my
well-being, and found their positive attitude very helpful.

Scientology Organizations are eager to make new converts,
and all Scientologists who are not Organization staff members are designated
“Field Staff Members,” or FSMs, and are expected to recruit new people.
Desperately wanting to help, I became a full-time FSM. Before I really knew
anything about Scientology, I was recruiting everyone I could. I did
“body-routing” from the street, which is to say “routing” people’s “bodies”
into the Mission.

I was “drilled” step by step, by an experienced
Scientologist. Pretending to be a member of the public, the coach dreamed up
situations. If I made a mistake the coach would say “flunk,” and the mistake
would be explained. Then the coach would repeat the phrase and the gestures I
had mishandled. Through the drills I was meant to become confident in real life
situations. The drills often took strange turns. One coach asked if I wanted to
“screw” her. I was flunked for not simply excusing myself. She explained that
we were not trying to interest prostitutes in Scientology. Homosexuals,
Communists, journalists and the mentally deranged were not to be approached
either. Scientology’s goal was to “make the able more able.”