Although our analysis was designed to fit a single, special
phenomenon, maintenance of clear status in Scientology, it really
explains something of more general interest: how people can sustain
their faith in magic despite day-to-day experience of its failure.
The Scientology processes to create clear are indeed examples of
modern magic: mental and symbolic exercises undertaken to accomplish
the impossible. The four strategies of Scientology show that faith in
magic can be sustained:
Together these factors protect Scientology's claims and insulate its magic against disconfirmation. However, the system is not wholly effective, nor is it, in principle, beyond empirical disconfirmation. That it is not wholly effective can be seen in the constant tinkering with the system that seems designed to add stronger inducements to members to continue their quest for supernormal powers. Even so, the system remains subject to potential disconfirmation because it primarily is dealing in magic, not religion. The difference is critical.
Magic offers to provide specific results that are subject to empirical verification. Although Scientology has fairly effectively prevented neutral tests of the results it claims, it does promise to provide members with tangible benefits that they, at least, are positioned to assess. Indeed, so long as the original claims about clear status were maintained, no clears could be created (and were not), for the fact is that, even within the persuasive structure of the cult, it was not possible to convince people that they had supernormal powers of such potency and specificity when they did not. Only by deferring these results to the new OT levels was it possible to create clears. But this is only postponement. Thousands of Scientologists still hope to gain the magical powers promised to them.
In contrast, religion offers its results in an inherently unverifiable context. Christianity, for example, does not promise eternal life in this world, but only after physical death and in another, nonempirical realm. Nor does Hinduism promise that a better life will come to the holy during their present incarnation -- but only that they will be reborn in a more exalted status. Such promises are beyond all possible empirical evaluation. Christianity is not haunted with people who have gone on to heaven but who still come around to Sunday services and who might suggest that heaven is highly overrated. But this is precisely Scientology's current situation.
For 30 years, Scientology has sought public status as a religion while privately claiming to be a science as well. For a time, auditors sometimes appeared in public wearing crosses, and a book comparing passages from the Bible with utterances by Hubbard seemed to claim Christian connections for the cult (Briggs et al., 1967). But today the church suggests that it is closer to the Eastern traditions. A label on our E-Meter says, "This Hubbard Electrometer is a Religious Artifact, Used in the Church Confessional, and is not Intended, Effective, or Ever to be Used for Attempted Diagnosis, Treatment, or Prevention of any Disease." And the costs of various courses and processing given on price lists are called "donations." Flag Land Base is said to be "a religious retreat maintained by the Church of Scientology for its parishioners." "Sunday Services" are held at Flag Land Base and many other centers, and, in many cities, Scientology branches have sought membership in local councils of churches.
Recently, new leaders, in the central organization as well as in the many regional orgs, seem to be moving Scientology further in the direction of pure religion and of lower tension with the sociocultural environment. But shifts like this have happened before, only to be reversed later on. Thus, we resist the powerful urge to predict that Scientology will soon abandon its magic to seek more comfortable status as a new member in the family of conventional churches.
The history of a cult is shaped by the decisions of individual leaders, by accident, and by general sociological principles. Our theory can explain and predict general processes of evolution much better than it can prophesy the fortunes of any particular religious organization. But this, of course, is a limitation faced by all social science. Such examples as Scientology can demonstrate the extreme precariousness of such bold magical claims as clear, and we can see in Scientology both the potential to abandon magic for religion and social forces moving in that direction. But there can be counterforces as well, and the future success of Scientology may depend upon the outcomes of struggles between different constituencies within the cult and different segments of the leadership.
Abandonment of the most precarious magic and evolution into a purely religious organization may be more in the interests of local Scientology churches than in the interest of Flag Land Base and the advanced orgs. Local leaders increase their own importance to the extent that they can build congregations content to hold the status of laity and enthusiastic about accepting the ministrations and rituals offered at the local church. But the advanced orgs and Flag need a constant flow of ambitious clients willing to leave the local org and invest great sums and much time in processing to climb the ladder of higher statuses. And it is the magical claims that provide a basis for that extensive hierarchy of processes.
Furthermore, the current magic is extremely labor intensive, and a switch to the pattern of more conventional religion would put many staff members out of work (and out of status) unless there were a sudden explosion in recruitment of new members, a trick Scientology seems unable to turn at the moment. Scientology is labor intensive because so many of the most important processing routines require an auditor to work for several hours a week with a single preclear, as is also the case for Psychoanalysis. When there were 13 staff members in Boston and an additional 4 at the Cambridge branch of the org, the total number of active Scientologists in the area was hardly 200. Thus, there were on the order of 10 lay members for each person who might be called clergy. At the same time, there were about 440 church members to each paid religious worker in the United States as a whole. Thus, Scientology was overclergied to a factor of about 44.
A religion might assign its staff extensive recruiting work to justify a high ratio of clergy to laity, but Scientology already does this and can hardly expand its recruiting efforts to fill slack time released by the abandonment of magical practices. Lower echelon staff members are now kept busy in such tasks as writing hundreds of letters to inactive members or immersed in labor intensive recruiting campaigns. For example, one week the Cambridge branch of the Boston org sent letters to a thousand schoolteachers in the area, and during another week it attempted to contact the 400 persons who had signed its guest book. From January through May 1970, this tiny branch distributed approximately 590,000 tickets on the streets, inviting people to attend the introductory lecture that recruited to the inexpensive HTHP-I communication course, which itself was the main recruiting ground for Dianetics auditing. This is long, hard work. Yet, over these five months, only 62 people signed up for the course, most of them only to drop out soon after.
If the cult evolved fully into a real religion, and abandoned most of its magical work, there would be fewer organizational statuses to go around even in the local orgs. As earlier chapters have told us, such conflict between the interests of different constituencies can lead to schism. Thus, if Scientology were to move in the direction of a real religion, and lower its tension significantly, some leaders might try to lead unemployed auditors from the local orgs in a sect movement, thereby reestablishing an emphasis on the old magical traditions.
To reduce tension significantly, Scientology need not abandon all magic, only what is most difficult to sustain in the face of likely empirical disconfirmation. Many intangible benefits promised by auditing are difficult to evaluate systematically. Both privately to their friends and publicly in formal testimonials, Scientologists habitually report moments of ecstasy achieved in the treatments, often coupled with a highly personal sense of new insights. Who but the persons experiencing these grand moments can judge their authenticity?
If it stops making refutable promises to achieve the impossible, Scientology may become even more effective in its use of a therapeutic model as the basis of recruitment and as a primary focus of member activity. That is, by becoming less specific and ambitious, Scientology will become a more "effective" therapy. As we pointed out in Chapter 7, all therapies seem to work because of regression toward the mean and the random ebbs and flows of life. People who seek a therapy at a "bad" time in their lives (which is when they have a motivation to seek it) are likely to find that their lives soon improve -- just as most people will recover from many kinds of illness whether they receive medical treatment or not. Thus it is that magic always has gained and regained its plausibility. Magic often "succeeds." If the shaman, the medieval witch, the psychoanalyst, and the water dowser must endure frequent failure, they also profit from frequent success. In similar fashion, many who begin Scientology courses find their expectations for increased happiness and self-confidence fulfilled, thus giving them "proof" that Scientology is valid and a reason for increased commitment.
Moreover, these therapeutic successes involve more than chance, regression to the mean, or placebo effects. In Chapter 14, we examine in detail the fact that human relations lie at the core of the conversion process. People convert to new faiths because their friends believe. In the encounter between an individual and a religious movement, a central feature is the formation of new and strong bonds of affection with members. Indeed, converts often markedly increase their self-esteem and social competence from being treated as personally valuable by other members. Affection is a truly powerful therapy and a specific cure for those suffering loneliness and isolation. Whatever else Scientology may offer, it is well designed to provide a rich supply of individual attention and affect to newcomers. The close-knit, mutually gratifying group of friends thus created needs only a religious creed to become a congregation.
Scientology already promulgates a belief that could be used to shift the cult away from its present reliance on magic to adopt a more religious solution to member needs: the doctrine of reincarnation. The superhuman capacities once associated with clear status, and now ascended to the levels of OT, may eventually move out of the empirical realm altogether. That is, people may no longer expect to develop genius-level IQ, perfect health, and a magnetic personality in this incarnation. But they may be promised such achievements in their next life, if they scrupulously follow Scientology's procedures. The failure of our world to be flooded by superhuman Scientologists returned from the grave will be explained by the cult's doctrine that reincarnation typically transfers one to a new planet. When Scientology truly becomes a church, dealing in supernatural general compensators, it will have escaped the pitfalls that beset all organizations based primarily on magic. And to be perfectly clear will be a posthumous award.
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