TWO


                                            THE REAL TRUTH V

The substance of what Scientology proposes as the truth about
life, existence, and the condition of man is infinitely more
complex than those rather crude Dianetics concepts about an
*analytical* mind, a *reactive* mind, and the existence of trace-
able engrams. All of L. Ron Hubbard's frantic comings and
goings were "firmly" based on a genuine philosophy which he
had put together, a philosophy which combined, with typically
billowing grandeur, the highest aspirations of pure Eastern
thinking and the meanest invention of the best science-fiction
bravado. Before I can explain the techniques this daring man
developed for the achievement of both the knowledge and
states of enlightenment he offers, we have to tackle exactly
what Scientology says it believes.
  If I were to call L. Ron Hubbard eclectic, it would he a mild
understatement. The foreword of one of his early books, *Scien-
tology 8-8008*, acknowledges a debt to Sigmund Freud, as well
as someone Hubbard claims to have met in the Navy, a Com-
mander Thompson who was supposedly one of Freud's pupils.
The foreword then goes on to list a few other people Hubbard
feels he should credit as the source for his ideas: Anaxagoras,
Aristotle, Roger Bacon - the acknowledgment is in alphabetical
order - Buddha, Charcot, Confucius, Rene Descartes, Will
Durant, Euclid, Michael Faraday, William James, Thomas
Jefferson, Jesus of Nazareth, Count Alfred Korzybski, James
Clerk Maxwell, Mohammed, Lao Tsze, van Leeuwenhoek,

                                                         101

102 SCIENTOLOGY

Lucretius Isaac Newton, Thomas Paine, Plato, Socrates, Her-
bert Spencer, the Vedic Hymns, and Voltaire. The implication
is clear: Not only is Hubbard well read and immensely discern-
ing, but he himself may deserve a place among such august
and heady company.
  Hubbard has a very specific notion of where, in the progres-
sion and scheme of things, Scientology belongs. In an outline
for the lectures he gave as part of Scientology's Professional
Course in July of 1954, he blocked out the earlier forms of
wisdom which preceded Scientology. He began with the Veda,
the sacred Hindu literature, and then moved to the Tao,
the thinking of Lao-Tsze and "The principle of wu-wei (non-
assertion or non-compulsion) control by permitting self-de-
terminism." This was followed by the Dhyana, a discussion of
its source, and the introduction of Gautama Sakyamundi, with
extensive quotes from the Dharmapada, verses attributed to
Sakyamundi who was considered the founder of the Dhyana.
>From there Hubbard moved on to the Hebrews and their
definition of the Messiah. Then to Jesus of Nazareth, his age,
his teaching and healing, his use of parables, his principles of
love and compassion amongst peoples, and his Crucifixion.
>From there Hubbard discussed the spread of Christianity into
"The Barbarism of Europe: Religion with fur breech-clouts,"
the closing of the trade routes, and the appearance of "West-
ern Seekers of Wisdom." His lectures ended with Webster's
definition of religion, and the qualification that a religion or
religious philosophy had as its goal "the freeing of the soul by
wisdom," a goal achieved by Scientology.
  Hubbard had, as was mentioned earlier, already lectured on
his ideas concerning the *theta*, man's true spirit, and MEST,
the product of *theta* in the form of matter, energy, space, and
time, as early as late 1950. Codifying his thinking further, he
stated what he believed to be a basic truth in a book called
*The Creation of Human Ability*. "*Considerations*, he wrote,
"*take rank over the mechanics of space, energy, and time*. By

                                          THE REAL TRUTH 103

this it is meant that an idea or opinion is, fundamentally,
superior to space, energy, and time, or organizations of form,
since it is conceived that space, energy, and time are them-
selves broadly agreed-upon considerations. That so many minds
agree brings about Reality in the form of space, energy, and
time. These mechanics, then, of space, energy, and time are
the products of agreed-upon considerations mutually held by
life."
  "Reality," John McMasters had said in his talk, "is *agree-
ment*." Everything Scientology postulates is based upon this
one idea. Everything said thus becomes valid and acquires its
own importance, its own existence as a *consideration*. What
this means further is that every idea Hubbard then introduced
might very well be absolutely true. His problem was first to
define what it was he had discovered to be the truth, and
then develop a way through which his followers could achieve
the same revelations and states of enlightenment.
  The evolution of Hubbard's achievement of his many *con-
siderations* first appeared in print in 1951, in a book called
*Science of Survival*. In it he explained that all life is composed
of two elements: statics and kinetics. A static was that which
possessed no motion and was without width, length, breadth,
depth, and mass. Its capabilities were unlimited, and it could
be represented by the mathematical symbol *theta* (0). The
kinetic he called MEST, the physical universe in terms of
matter, energy, space, and time. In *Scientology 8-8008* he sum-
marized all this as follows: "It is now considered that the origin
of MEST lies with *theta* itself, and that MEST, as we know
the physical universe, is a product of *theta*." Put another way,
colloquially, all matter, energy, space, and time are, well, a
figment of our imagination. *It* is all here because we are
thinking *it*.
  It is important to understand what the *theta* and its entity
the *thetan* has represented to Hubbard over the years, because
what it is, how it has behaved, and why, have produced many

104 SCIENTOLOGY

of the *considerations* fundamental to Scientology. After nam-
ing it in *Science of Survival*, Hubbard, in *Scientology 8-80* (a
book which appeared in 1952 and not to be confused with a
subsequent book, Scientology 8-8008) gave more information
concerning the *thetan*.

  *Thetan*, [he wrote] is the word given to the awareness of
  awareness unit, the life source, the personality, and the being-
  ness of homo sapiens....It is the person....The *thetan*
  is a glowing unit of energy source. He seems to himself to
  be anything from a quarter of an inch to two inches in
  diameter. His capability is knowing and being. He exudes and
  uses energy in many forms. He can perceive and handle
  energy flows easily. The *thetan* enters some time in early
  infancy. This may be before, during or following birth. He
  comes in a state of personal unknowingness, desiring to have
  an identity which he considers he has not without a body. He
  throws capping beams at the genetic entity, takes over the
  body....

  The "genetic entity" (GE) which had a "capping beam"
thrown over it by the *thetan* is, according to Hubbard's ex-
planation, something akin to a trace memory from a thetan's
very first MEST body. It appears somewhere in the body's cen-
ter, vaguely in the area of the stomach, and was what Dianetics
had once identified as being the somatic mind. The GE, Hub-
bard wrote, "carries on through the evolutionary parallel with
the protoplasmic line, generation to generation, usually on the
same planet."
  The *thetan* may be extraterrestrial and has certainly been
elsewhere, galactically speaking, but the GE has been on this
planet from the very beginning of time.

  The genetic entity apparently enters the protoplasm line some
  two days or a week prior to conception. There is some evi-
  dence that the GE is actually double, one entering on the
  sperm side, one entering on the ovum side....Pre-sperm
  recordings are quite ordinary....Pre-ovum sequences are on
  record but are not common....The *theta* being apparently
  joins the track immediately prior to birth. Its sequence, for

                                          THE REAL TRUTH 105

  itself, is death, between-lives, birth, all in a few minutes
  according to some findings, a sequence which is quite aber-
  rative....The genetic line consists of the total of incidents
  which have occured during the evolution of the MEST body
  itself. The composite of these facsimiles has the semblance
  of being [i.e., the GE. Discovering it, Hubbard wrote] makes
  it possible at last to vindicate the theory of evolution proposed
  by Darwin....You as a *theta* being may or may not have
  seen Greece or Rome. Your MEST GE has probably activated
  a body there, just as it has been...an anthropoid in the
  deep forests of forgotten continents or a mollusc seeking to
  survive on the shore of some lost sea.

  For eons, the GE progressed, first as a clam, then as some-
thing Hubbard called the "Grim Weeper," or "Boohoo," an
entity which "spent half a million years on the beach," strug-
gling to breathe, desperate to eat, opening up for food and
instead getting an incoming wave in its mouth. The water
would be pumped out, and the weeper was in action. Time
passed. The GE was involved as a bird, or a bat, was eaten,
was a sloth - terrified of snakes and of falling - became a cave-
man, and even Piltdown man - the now famous prehistoric-man
hoax - who became responsible for "obsessions about biting,
efforts to hide the mouth and early familial troubles" because
"the Piltdown teeth were enormous and he was quite careless
as to whom and what he bit and often very surprised at the
resulting damage."
  The importance of the GE has been somewhat downgraded
by Scientology in recent years, although its presence and effect
is still acknowledged. The qualities and capabilities of the
*thetan* have always been much more important. They are what
Scientology sees as being the optimum expression of what
we all really are: telepathy, psychokinetic powers, emission of
electronic flow, exteriorization...."A *theta* body," Hubbard
wrote, "with its alertness restored is capable of remolding the
human body within its field, taking off weight here, restoring
it there, changing appearances and even height."

106 SCIENTOLOGY

  Going hand in hand with Hubbard's "discovery" of the ex-
istence of the *theta* was his doctrine concerning "past lives,"
where the *theta* had made extraordinary voyages and under-
gone startling adventures, all of which play an important role
in determining the health and welfare of the *theta* in what-
ever state it is in at a given moment. Since time began, *theta*
has been acquiring and losing bodies, some on this earth, some
elsewhere. The moment of acquiring a new body is a moment
of unknowingness for the *thetan*, and though the new body
functions, its identity is a mystery. Thus, in Scientology's
christening ceremony, the *thetan* meets its own body as well
as the bodies of those adults whom it can depend on for care
and feeding.
  Once life or involvement with a body ends for a *thetan*, it
leaves it, making its way directly to what is called an Implant
Station, there to be implanted with various goals, the most
common of which is the goal To Forget. At the implant sta-
tion, the *thetan* waits to pick up another body. There is often
competition among the *thetans* gathered there because it seems
that being a *thetan* without a body is uncomfortable. The
minimum time spent waiting, according to Hubbard, is sixty-
nine days. Hubbard has said that on a visit to Venus he toured
an Implant Station, though there are other such stations lo-
cated throughout the universe. "The report area for most has
been Mars," he wrote in *A History of Man*. "Some women
report to stations elsewhere in the Solar System. There are
occasional incidents about Earth report stations. The report
stations are protected by screens. The last report station on
Earth was established in the Pyrenees."
  With these preliminary beliefs established, there are certain
essential "certainties," or abstracts which we should get into
here because they affect the way Scientology examines the
universe and then seeks to explain why what happens hap-
pens in a particular way, and why behavior occurs in a par-
ticular way.

                                          THE REAL TRUTH 107

  Scientology's foundation stone is "the CYCLE OF ACTION,"
which Hubbard described in *Scientology: The Fundamentals
of Thought*. He began by defining the ancient, traditional cycle
of birth springing from chaos: growing, decaying, dying, and
returning to chaos. This, he said, Scientology expressed "more
briefly. The CYCLE OF ACTION IS AN APPARENCY AS
FOLLOWS: CREATE, then SURVIVE, then DESTROY; or
Creation, Survival, Destruction." The word APPARENCY is
important here because according to Hubbard this cycle is an
*idea* which we believe to be so because we see it. We suppose
it to be so - CONSIDER it - and "then we see it so." He then
takes the traditional life-cycle of birth, life, and death, and
says, "In Scientology it can be seen that none of these steps
are necessary. One considers them so, and so they are 'true.' A
man...grows old to the degree that he believes he is growing
old." His point is that our agreement makes this cycle be so,
but, he adds, it "is not TRUE. It is only APPARENT. It is
APPARENT because we believe we see it...because we
AGREE that it should be so." Arguing that our belief in this
particular "cycle of action" has never cured anyone of any-
thing, or made them more intelligent, Hubbard suggests that
the cycle must obviously be wrong. He then suggests that all
of the elements of this particular cycle are, in fact, creative
acts. Here is how he charts what he means:

  CREATE = make, manufacture, construct, postulate, bring into
  beingness = CREATE.
  Create-create-create = create again continuously one moment
  after the next = SURVIVAL.
  Create-counter-create = to create something against a creation -
  to create one thing and then create something else against =
  DESTROY.
  No creation = an absence of any creation = no creative activity.

  These principles are absolutely fundamental to Hubbard's
thinking and play a crucial role in the development of the
techniques for the achievement of Scientology's enlightenment.

108 SCIENTOLOGY

When Hubbard developed Dianetics, he postulated four dy-
namics. In Scientology, these expanded to eight, because, "as
one looks out across the confusion which is life or existence
to most people, one can discover eight main divisions to each
of which applies the condition of existence. Each division con-
tains a cycle of action." The eight dynamics are:

    THE FIRST DYNAMIC - is the urge toward existence as
  one's self. Here we have individuality expressed fully. This
  can be called the SELF DYNAMIC.
    THE SECOND DYNAMIC - is the urge toward existence
  as a sexual or bisexual activity. This dynamic actually has two
  divisions. Second Dynamic (a) is the sexual act itself and the
  Second Dynamic (b) is the family unit, including the rearing
  of children. This can be called the SEX DYNAMIC.
    THE THIRD DYNAMIC - is the urge toward existence in
  groups of individuals. Any group or part of an entire class
  could be considered to be a part of the Third Dynamic. The
  school, the society, the town, the nation are each part of the
  Third Dynamic, and each one is a Third Dynamic. This can
  be called the GROUP DYNAMIC.
    THE FOURTH DYNAMIC - is the urge toward mankind.
  Whereas the white race would be considered a Third Dynamic,
  all the races would be considered the Fourth Dynamic. This
  can be called the MANKIND DYNAMIC.
    THE FIFTH DYNAMIC - is the urge toward existence of
  the animal kingdom. This includes all living things whether
  vegetable or animal. The fish in the sea, the beasts of the
  field, or of the forest, grass, trees, flowers or anything directly
  and intimately motivated by life. This can be called the
  ANIMAL DYNAMIC.
    THE SIXTH DYNAMIC - is the urge toward existence as
  the physical universe. The physical universe is composed of
  matter, energy, space and time. In Scientology we take the
  first of each of these words and coin a word, MEST. This
  can be called the UNIVERSE DYNAMIC.
    THE SEVENTH DYNAMIC - is the urge toward existence
  as or of spirits. Anything spiritual, with or without identity,
  would come under the heading of the Seventh Dynamic. This
  can be called the SPIRITUAL DYNAMIC.
    THE EIGHTH DYNAMIC - is the urge toward existence as

                                          THE REAL TRUTH 109

  Infinity. This is also identified as the Supreme Being. It is
  carefully observed here the the *science* of Scientology does
  not intrude into the Dynamic of the Supreme Being. This is
  called the Eighth Dynamic because the symbol of infinity
  stood upright makes the numeral "8." This can be called the
  INFINITY or GOD DYNAMIC.

  "The keystone of living associations," Hubbard wrote in
*Scientology: The Fundamentals of Thought*, is "The ARC tri-
angle." He called it life's "common denominator." The A stands
for Affinity in the sense of emotions such as loving or liking.
The R represents Reality, that which people agree is real. The
C is Communications, the most important of the triangle's
three corners because it is "the solvent for all things." Hub-
bard explains that a communication must consist of something
to send to someone who is prepared to receive it. And when
people have something in common, the same level of "affinity,"
why communication is simple. But he points out that as we go
lower on the "tone scale" our affinities become more solid, so
while on the high levels our communications are erudite and
friendly, on the bottom you find that most solid of solids:
WAR. "Where the affinity level is hate," he tells us coldly, "the
agreement is solid matter, and the communication...bullets."
  This tone scale which Hubbard mentions first appeared in
Dianetics is a classification of human emotions in a particular
order, from the very bottom - apathy - to the very top - enthusi-
asm. Each level was given a number and arranged in a
descending order of desirability. What was important was not
the particular number opposite an emotion, but that it was
either higher or lower - better or worse - than another emotion.
  The tone scale, Hubbard wrote, "plots the descending spiral
of life from full vitality and consciousness through half vitality
and half consciousness down to death...the whole intent
of Scientology is to raise the individual from lower to higher
strata on this scale by increasing intelligence, awareness, and
ability."
  (The tone scale is diagramed on the following page.)

110 SCIENTOLOGY

    |-------------------> 40.0    Serenity of Beingness
    |                      8.0    Exhilaration
    |         |--------->  4.0    Enthusiasm
    |         |            3.0    Conservatism
    |         |            2.5    Boredom
    |       THETAN         2.0    Antagonism
    |        PLUS          1.8    Pain
    |        BODY          1.5    Anger
    |       Social         1.2    No Sympathy
    |    training and      1.1    Covert Hostility
    |      education       1.0    Fear
    |   sole guarantee     0.9    Sympathy
    |         of           0.8    Propitiation
    |    sane conduct      0.5    Grief
    |         |            0.374  Making Amends
    |         |            0.05   Apathy
  THETAN      |--------->  0.0    Being a Body (Death)     Failure
SCALE RANGE               -0.2    Being Other Bodies       Regret
Well below                -1.0    Punishing Other Bodies   Blame
body death                -1.3    Responsibility as Blame  Shame
at "0" down               -1.5    Controlling Bodies
to complete               -2.2    Protecting Bodies
unbeingness               -3.0    Owning Bodies
as a thetan               -3.5    Approval From Bodies
    |                     -4.0    Needing Bodies
    |-------------------> -8.0    Hiding

                                          THE REAL TRUTH 111

  At the same time that Scientology's intention is to raise a
person on the tone scale and improve his abilities, it is also
Scientology's goal to rehabilitate the *thetan* by removing aber-
rations. This is critical because if it can be done successfully
during this lifetime, the *thetan* will enjoy all future lives free
of any kind of problems. If, however, aberrations are only
"keyed out," which is merely being released from some portion
of the reactive mind, the death of the current body - Scientol-
ogists often refer to our bodies as "this piece of meat," or
"this meat of ours" - will not free the *thetan* from suffering the
reappearance of aberrations. Furthermore, a properly freed
*thetan* will not have to return to an implant station to obtain
a new body. So Scientology's techniques locate the *thetan* and
bring its past experiences out into the open. Like Dianetics,
there was one aberration which was absolutely "basic" to the
liberation of the *thetan*. "The one basic engram," as Hubbard
described it in *Scientology 8-80*, "on top of which all this-life
engrams are mere locks...was received by the human race
many, many centuries ago, and probably was a supersonic shot
in the forehead, chest, and stomach, incapacitating, and reduc-
ing, the size and function of the pineal gland."
  It was a major "breakthrough" in Scientology when Hub-
bard announced that the actual sources of aberrations for the
*thetan* were the implants themselves. During a *thetan's* sojourn
at an implant station the goal To Forget was implanted, and
all during previous lives, the *thetan* was having a wide variety
of other goals implanted. Thus trapped by this goal To Forget,
it became a monumental task to unlock those goals which had
been over-implanted by the goal To Forget. This particular
goal, according to Hubbard, was implanted on the planet
Helatrobus some 38 trillion to 43 trillion years ago. In an HCO
Bulletin, July 24, 1963, Hubbard described other implants
which had been perpetrated upon *thetans* prior to the Hela-
trobus Implants.

112 SCIENTOLOGY

Helatrobus Implants             38.2 trillion years ago to 52 tril-
                                  lion years ago.
Aircraft Door Implants          216 trillion years ago to 35 tril-
                                  lion years ago.
The Gorilla Goals               319 trillion years ago to 83 tril-
                                  lion trillion trillion years ago.
The Bear Goals                  83 trillion trillion trillion years
                                  ago to about 40.7 trillion tril-
                                  lion trillion trillion years ago.
The Glade Implants              40.7 trillion trillion trillion tril-
  (*formerly called               lion years ago to 5.9 trillion
  Black Thetan*)                  trillion trillion trillion trillion
                                  years ago.
The Invisible Picture Goals     5.9 trillion trillion trillion trillion
                                  trillion to a date not fully de-
                                  termined.
The Minion Implants             Not yet determined.
The Story of Creation Implants  70 trillion trillion trillion trillion
                                  trillion trillion trillion years.

  Ten days earlier, in an HCO Bulletin dated July 4, 1963,
Hubbard revealed in fascinating detail how some of the vari-
ous goals were "laid in." The Aircraft Goal "was given in the
mocked up fuselage of an aircraft with the *thetan* fixed before
an aircraft door...."The Gorilla Goals were

  given in an amusement park with a single tunnel, a roller
  coaster and a ferris wheel....The symbol of a Gorilla was
  always present in the place the goal was given. Sometimes a
  large gorilla, black, was seen elsewhere than the park. A
  Mechanical or live gorilla was always seen in the park. This
  activity was conducted by the Hoipolloi, a group of operators
  in meat body societies. They were typical carnival people.
  They let out Concessions for these Implant "Amusement
  Parks." A pink-striped white shirt with sleeve garters was the
  uniform of the Hoipolloi. Such a figure often rode on the
  roller coaster cars. Monkeys were also used on the cars. Ele-
  phants sometimes formed part of the equipment. The Hoi-
  polloi or Gorilla goals were laid in with fantastic motion.

                                          THE REAL TRUTH 113

  Blasts of raw electricity and explosions were both used to lay
  the Items in. [The Black Thetan goals] were given in a glade
  surrounded by the stone heads of "black thetans" who spat
  white energy at the trapped thetan. The trapped thetan was
  motionless.

  Of course all this struck me as being insane garbage. While
the wordy repostulations of affinity, reality, and communica-
tions, and the cycles of action and the dynamics were all
something I could swallow simply because they were primarily
the taking of existing concepts or notions or even relationships
and rewording them, giving them new names, so that you
would see them *his* way, the Goals struck me as being pure
science fiction. Talking to a Scientologist one day, trying hard
to maintain objectivity and an open mind, I suddenly blurted
out that believing in something like the Gorilla Goals was
stretching it. The scientologist looked mildly surprised. "Why?"
he said.
  "*Gorilla Goals*?" I shot back.
  "Well," he said thoughtfully, "I might have agreed at one
time, except that a couple of months ago I got this bad
toothache. And I knew there was no *reason* for me to have it;
I'd gone to the dentist and there was nothing wrong with my
teeth. So I sat down and thought about why I had this tooth-
ache. And all of a sudden, I saw a gorilla."
  "A gorilla?"
  The scientologist smiled, almost apologetically. "I know how
that sounds. But I did. I saw this very big gorilla."
  "...Because your toothache had something to do with a
goal connected to the time you were a gorilla, or something?"
I said.
  "Something like that," the scientologist said calmly.
  The weird thing is that just at this point, where Hubbard
runs the risk of really losing me, he combines a couple of
these elements to produce yet another principle which is not
wildly fanciful.

114 SCIENTOLOGY

  The idea that your having a goal-created energy which had
actual mass led him to define something he called GPM:
"goals-problems-mass." The idea quite simply was that in past
lives a person acquired, one way or another, pleasantly or
unpleasantly, a wide variety of goals, all of varying natures of
importance. But each, because it was a goal, acquired certain
obstacles it had to overcome. Problems arose, and as such, as
the mind or *theta* grappled with these problems, mass ac-
cumulated. It may have been solely in the form of stored-up
energy, but it was definitely mass, and it was, according to
Hubbard, measurable. In a book called *Dianetics: 1955*, Hub-
bard had written: "If there were no energy being created by
the awareness-of-awareness unit (the *thetan*), then one would
be at a loss to account for mental energy pictures, for these
things, being made at a tremendously rapid rate, have con-
siderable mass in them - mass which is measurable on a thing
which is as common and everyday as a pair of bathroom
scales." The E-Meter.

  In what I humbly would have to call an astounding revela-
tion made known in an HCO Bulletin of May 11, 1963, known
as the "Heaven" bulletin, L. Ron Hubbard announced that
GPM implants had been done in Heaven. "The contents of
this HCO Bulletin," he wrote, "discover the apparent under-
lying impulses of religious zealotism and the source of the
religious mania and insanity which terrorized Earth over the
ages and has given religion the appearance of insanity." In
no uncertain terms, he explained why and how the implants
occurred. "For a long while, some people have been cross
with me for my lack of co-operation in believing in a Christian
Heaven, God and Christ. I have never said I didn't disbelieve
in a Big Thetan but there was certainly something very corny
about Heaven *et al*. Now I have to apologize. There was a
Heaven. Not too unlike, in cruel betrayal, the heaven of the
Assassins in the 12th Century, who, like everyone else, drama-

                                          THE REAL TRUTH 115

tized the whole, track implants - if a bit more so....The
symbol of the crucified Christ is very apt indeed. It's the
symbol of a *thetan* betrayed...." Hubbard knew this because
he had visited Heaven twice. "The first time I arrived and the
moment of the implant To Forget was dated at 43,891,611,177
years, 344 days, 10 hours, 20 minutes and 40 seconds from
10:02 1/2 P.M. Daylight Greenwich Time May 9, 1963. The
second series was dated to the moment of the implant To
Forget as 42,681,459,477,315 years, 132 days, 18 hours, 20
minutes and 15 seconds from 11:02 1/2 P.M. Daylight Greenwich
Time May 9, 1963." The implants, Hubbard wrote, were elec-
tronic and done on a nonvisible *thetan* who arrived by ship in
a doll's body. Twenty-nine goals were made the first visit, 21
the second. Each time the first three goals were identical: To
Forget, To Remember, To Go Away.

  All of what Scientology believes and theorizes can, Hubbard
explains in *The Creation of Human Ability*, be broadly divided
into two general categories: Scientology and Para-Scientology.

  Under Scientology we group those things of which we can be
  certain and only those things of which we can be certain....
  Para-Scientology is that large bin which includes all greater or
  lesser uncertainties. Here are the questionable things, the
  things of which the common normal observer cannot be sure
  with a little study. Here are theories, here are groups of data,
  even groups commonly accepted as "known." Some of the
  classified bodies of data which fall in Para-Scientology are:
  Dianetics, incidents on the "wholetrack," the immortality of
  Man, the existence of God, engrams containing pain and un-
  consciousness and yet all perception, prenatals, clears, char-
  acter, and many other things which, even when closely and
  minutely observed, still are not certain things to those who
  observe them. Such things have relative truth. They have to
  some a high degree of reality; they have to others non-
  existence. They require a highly specialized system in order
  to observe them at all. Working with such uncertainties one
  can produce broad and sweeping results: one can make the ill

116 SCIENTOLOGY

  well again, one can right even the day which went most
  wrong; but those things which require highly specialized
  communication systems remain uncertain to many....Also
  under the heading of Para-Scientology one would place such
  things as past lives, mysterious influences, astrology, mysticism,
  religion, psychology, psychiatry, nuclear physics, and any
  other science based on theory.

  Rather than be any sort of refutation of Scientology's beliefs
and theories, the notion of a Scientology and a Para-Scien-
tology confounds only because with continued development
of various avenues of thinking, it became increasingly difficult
to separate what was a concrete Scientological "considera-
tion," and what represented Para-Scientology's "highly special-
ized system in order to observe them at all." That there is no
true division between the two categories is evident from the
Axioms, which represent the fundamental substance of all
which Scientology believes, and which Hubbard calls "com-
monly held considerations,"
  In all, there are 58 Axioms, 7 Pre-logics, and 24 Logics. They
range from Axiom 1: "LIFE IS BASICALLY A STATIC," to
Axiom 39: "LIFE POSES PROBLEMS FOR ITS OWN
SOLUTION," to Axiom 48: "LIFE IS A GAME WHEREIN
THETA AS THE STATIC SOLVES THE PROBLEMS OF
THETA AS MEST." Pre-logic 1 is: "SELF-DETERMINISM
IS THE COMMON DENOMINATOR OF ALL LIFE IM-
PULSES." LOGIC 18 is: "A POSTULATE IS AS VALUABLE
AS IT IS WORKABLE."

  I have already pointed out that in explaining the origin of
the word Scientology, Hubbard never mentioned the German
social psychologist, Dr. A. Nordenholz. Nor does Hubbard
acknowledge any possible debt to Nordenholz in his extensive
listings of his researches into Eastern and Western thinking.
But Nordenholz is important.
  Very little is known about this man who wrote several
books which examine the social phenomenon of the individual

                                          THE REAL TRUTH 117

against the concept of the "self" as created by the conscious
mind. He was born in Buenos Aires in 1862, the son of the
German consul there, and returned to his fatherland where
he became a farmer, scientist, Doctor of Law and Philosophy,
and was interested in the links binding economic and social
problems both in the question of industrial production and
in the question of social identities. In 1904, he joined Dr.
Alfred Ploetz to found a periodical in Germany called *The
Racial, Social, Biological Archive, Including Racial and Social
Hygiene*. It was published regularly until July of 1944, and
though Dr. Nordenholz's contributions disappear during the
1920's, it has been speculated that the Archive was an
important source of much of the racial thinking of Hitler
Germany. In 1934, Nordenholz published a book called
*Scientologie: Wissenschaft von der Beschaffenheit und der
Tauglichkeit des Wissens (The Science of the Constitution &
Usefulness of Knowledge and Knowing). It was painstakingly
and faithfully translated into English recently by Woodward
R. McPheeters.
  Nordenholz begins by stating that the problem of a science
of knowing or knowledge, which he names Scientologie or
Eidologie, is isolating knowledge as "a particular appearance
of the world." "What is Knowing?" he goes on to ask. "What
IS Knowledge? What can we know, what must we know about
Knowledge/Knowing, to do justice to and to justify the world?
The question is thus nothing less than self-knowing, determina-
tion of the nature of self, and also of self-realization and
self-understanding of Knowledge/Knowing. Is this possible?
If possible, how can the systemization of Knowledge/Knowing
itself be accomplished? How can a Science of Knowledge/
Knowing be produced?"
  Nordenholz goes on to establish certain definitions and
concludes that "the world is nothing but knowledge, merely
an extraction from knowing....Only out of the equally
valued mutual operation of Knowledge/Knowing as shaper &

118 SCIENTOLOGY

creator, and world as created & shaped, is it possible to arrive
at the true science of the world....Out of this circumstance
comes the right of Scientologie to treat the world as belonging
to its counterpart, as an appendage of the consciousness."
  Having thus established the relationship between knowl-
edge/knowing and the world, Nordenholz declares that "Un-
aware thinking within the world has always simply perceived
THE state or current condition." He explains that conscious-
ness can be raised to a position of independence, or isolation,
and then states: "The consciousness, which always remains a
part and particular creation of the world, is incompetent to
create from a nothingness because of this very worldliness.
In order for the consciousness to be able to create, it has to
first find a fountainhead source out of which it can create,
and this Something is a Beingness."
  Nordenholz next introduces the notion of Axioms as a
decreed system to get out of a cycle he identifies as: "the
systemization of consciousness & reason demands knowing..."
versus "knowing demands a system of consciousness & reason."
He defines axioms as "comprehensions, propositions, declara-
tions, which are initially set in place *as if* they stand of their
own power and dignity, *as if* they were capable of, but do not
need, a verification or confirmation from another source." He
then goes on to structure Scientologie as follows:

    1. In axioms: exposition of the axioms and the axiom sys-
  tems of consciousness.
    2. In systems: erection of the forming or moulding system
  of the consciousnesses, the comprehension system of the
  reason, all form the axiom system.
    3 "In demonstration: justification of the produced compre-
  hension systems and with that, working back to the under-
  lying basis of the axiom systems.
    4. In study of the origin, nature, methods, and limits of
  know]edge: establishment of the Total-system of sciences from
  the foundation of Scientologie systems of knowledge and
  comprehension.

                                          THE REAL TRUTH 119

  The most important axiom, to appreciate Nordenholz's pos-
sible influence on L. Ron Hubbard, was the Axiom of Media-
tion: "The consciousness, nominated as the creator of the
world, presupposes a wellspring, a source, out of which it can
scoop; a Being, which somehow and in some measure can be
reached thru consciousness, but which exists there by itself
BEFORE and independent from the consciousness. The as-
sumption of a creator activity of the consciousness is dependent
upon the Standing Orders of self-primordial, free, detached,
absolute Beings, the By-Itself-Being(s)."
  What interested Nordenholz was the eventual relationship
between an individual and what is called "society": how his
role is defined, how his productivity is affected, what freedom
actually means, how power is achieved. If the exposition of
all these ideas is difficult and often bordering on the unread-
able, it is in part because prior to this, no one had ever
attempted to organize a system of thought on the principle
that knowledge/knowing might be isolated as an entity called
"beingness."
  To understand L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology, it is not
necessary to suggest he knew of the Nordenholz book and
borrowed freely; it is only important to know that Nordenholz
had attempted, as early as 1927, to establish a working thesis
with regard to what he called "the systemization of conscious-
ness...." Here was the notion of the existence of a "fountain-
head source out of which it (consciousness) can create," here
was the requirement that "all our comprehensions have to fit
themselves into the axiomatically founded system." If Hubbard
did in fact know of Nordenholz and his theories, the only thing
lacking for him would have been a sense of adventure, of
extraterrestrial panache to suggest that what this Beingness
might be is something extremely attractive and powerful. For
this, he might have found ample inspiration in a book written
in 1938 by R. Buckminster Fuller, father of geodesic structures,
called *Nine Chains to the Moon*.

120 SCIENTOLOGY

  *Nine Chains to the Moon* is a long book composed of
forty-three brief chapters, each with a snappy title such as
"E = Mc2 = Mrs. Murphy's Horse Power." Each is an expository
statement about some aspect of life on this earth, written in
a style which is quixotic and hard-hitting, made graphic by
extensive use of capitalized words, with whiz-bang conversions
of complex abstractions: "The *principle of teleology* implies
that the *adequacy and effect of conclusion are directly pro-
portional to the degree of ramification and penetration of the
original inclusion*" - into everyday metaphors: "The consump-
tion and digestion of facts and statistics is somewhat like
eating and chewing hay and thistles. There is nourishment in
them in their raw state, to be sure, but a cow is needed to
convert them into milk." All of it is based on a premise which
Fuller explains in An Outline: "The sum-total of human
desire to survive is dominant over the sum-total of the impulse
to destroy." After discussing industry and machinery and
Henry Ford and the appearance of alloys and our industrial
conceptualization of houses and objects devoid of any insights
into the higher meanings of existence, suffering only to protect,
maintain and abet life, Fuller tells a short story involving "Mr.
Jones...an amateur hyper-short wave radio expert, *and*
a lovely young lady from XK-planet."
  After meeting the young lady, and learning of her planet
and its distance from the earth and how XK time is bogglingly
different from our time, Jones asks about the X-ian philosophy.

  "First [the young lady says in answer] we evolved a com-
  pletely ABSTRACTED, DEPERSONALIZED, UN-SELFED
  BIBLE, which is a rationalized account of the GAME OF
  LIFE, segregating its *Unity of totality* into *chaotic multiplicity*
  and subsequently *rationally recomposing* it to *unity*, to *sym-
  metry* of *unity* and to *completeness* through *synchronization*,
  which is the *checkmating* of *time*, against which the game is
  played by the totality of TRUE COMPREHENSION."
    This attitude [wrote Fuller] caused Jones to realize with
  astonishment that his earth Bible, through its mysteriously

                                          THE REAL TRUTH 121

  confused insistence upon explaining the reality of truth in
  terms of grossly imperfect interpretation of the tangible man
  mechanism, constantly provokes inability to explain the logi-
  cally superman realities of totality; with the result that, in
  terms of the imperfect self mechanism, understanding of the
  realities has to be unreasonably recognized by a SURREN-
  DERING BELIEFS IN MIRACLES, these miracles in turn
  evoking an awe-ful, fear-ful, wide-eyed, secretive, cultish
  herding around SECRET THEORIES OF EXPLANATION
  OF REALITY in the TERMS OF UNREALITY, which,
  thought Jones, is certainly no fun.

  After explaining the game of life, the young lady then went
on to explain the X-IAN Resolution. The Resolution is long,
goes on for several pages, and is written in that same pound-
ing, all-caps declamatory style. "RESOLVED," it opens, "to
solve agelong problems NOW in terms of self instead of
egotistically blaming primary cause on some *other thing or
being*, simply saying to ourselves: SELF! YOU CAN ONLY
BE HURT IF, WHERE, and WHEN YOU ARE VULNER-
ABLE." The Resolution goes on to state that all existence is,
in effect, an assumption. Jones and the young lady finally
*understand* each other and achieve *communication*.

  All this background is basic to what Scientology purports to
believe and practice as its tenets. Its intention is to produce at
first a *preclear*, formerly called a Mest Clear; then a *clear*,
formerly called a *theta clear* and finally, penultimately, an
*operating thetan*. The difference between the last two is very
important. A *clear* is someone who is *at cause* over matter,
energy, space, and time. "In the mental sense," Church of
Scientology Minister Bob Thomas emphasized when we dis-
cussed Scientology's various states of being.
  What Scientology means by the phrase *at cause*, with its
companion number, *at effect*, is simply that if something is
bothering you, if you are tormented by whatever kind of
inner aberration, you must not treat it symptomatically, which

122 SCIENTOLOGY

is *at effect* - the aberration's effect on you - but where it really
began, *at cause*. "When you're clear," Thomas said, "you're
free in the mental sense, but you want to extend your influence
and power and so on." Thus becoming an *operating thetan*
is not merely being *at cause* mentally, but "at cause over
matter, energy, space, and time in the *physical*, total sense."
When I suggested that this implied that an *operating thetan*
could levitate, rise right up into the air and hang there,
Thomas sat forward in his chair and said, "Right. These are
the ultimate goals that are *envisioned*. I'm saying that these
are the ultimate things it is hoped man is capable of; if he
really has those potentials, which we assume he has. One of
the basic Scientology viewpoints is that absolutes are not
attainable in the physical universe, but you can get more and
more and more free, and that's what's happening in Scien-
tology: people are finding out more and more about them-
selves, and the more they find out about themselves, the freer
they are. And we envision no ultimate limitation on how free
an individual can be. Beyond the state of clear, there are
these grades of operating thetans. When you're *clear*, you're
free in the mental sense, but you want to extend your in-
fluence and power as a spiritual being. And that road is a
higher road which Mr. Hubbard is researching at this
moment."

                                      TECHNIQUES, DRILLS, VI
                                            AND PROCESSES

I first encountered both auditing and the structure of Scien-
tology's extensive technology when I was given some simple
auditing by a Scientology staff member. It was part of a
standard introductory session which had begun with the free
Hubbard film and lecture. When it finally came time for me
to be audited, actually to see an E-Meter and have it
demonstrated on me, the moment, despite the monotony of
the film and lecture which had come first, became heavy with
meaning, as if *now*, having survived the film and lecture, the
inner door was going to open and the heart and substance of
Scientology revealed in a clear light.
  I was led to a small room by a Miss Adler, a pleasant-
looking, large lady who, as I was already getting used to with
scientologists, insisted on glaring at me from beneath lowered
brows. The room we entered was small and I was made to sit
down on one side of a small table. Miss Adler sat down
opposite me. For a long moment she continued to stare, and
then turned the E-Meter around so that I could look at it.
There it was, a small, folding box which opens up to stand
on the desk in front of an auditor much the way a book would
stand if you opened it in the middle and set it up like a small
tent. A large meter faces the auditor, with a large dial on the
upper left of the panel, a small on-off switch below it, and
three knobs along the bottom: a sensitivity booster, a test-set-

                                                         123

124 SCIENTOLOGY

transit knob, and a trim knob. Two wires run out from either
side of the whole thing and are clamped onto two tin cans.
These cans are held by the *preclear*, in this instance me, and
as the auditor asks various questions, some general, some more
specific, the needle is carefully observed. And if it jumps....
  Hubbard once said: "The meter tells you what the preclear's
mind is doing when the preclear is made to think of some-
thing. If they're emotionally disturbed about cats, and they're
talking about cats, the needle flies about. If they're not dis-
turbed about cats, the needle doesn't fly about. So you let
them talk about cats until they're no longer disturbed about
cats, and then the needle no longer flies about." It comes to
rest because the disturbance is gone. Or because the battery
inside the E-Meter has run down.
  The E-Meter is actually a very simple device which mea-
sures electrical resistances. It is quite similar to the invention
of Sir Charles Wheatstone - dubbed a Wheatstone bridge - on
which the unknown resistance (capacity to conduct electricity)
of an object or subject was measured by passing a very small
charge of electricity through it and then comparing its con-
ductivity with a known resistance. In Scientology's E-Meter,
which was refined by Volney Mathison from the basic design
of the Wheatstone bridge, a small battery provides the power
to pass a very small charge through the leads and through
your body. Scientology believes, according to a book called
*The Hubbard Electrometer*, that the machine "measures the
relative density of the body." What is measurable by the
needle "is specifically the impingement of the individual him-
self (the spirit) upon the body by the direct action of
thought." The current, Hubbard wrote in a handbook, *E-Meter
Essentials*, "is influenced by the mental masses, pictures, cir-
cuits and machinery." As I examined the meter, I remembered
the FDA case in Washington and the charges which followed.
The E-Meter Miss Adler was showing me had that small

                       TECHNIQUES, DRILLS, AND PROCESSES 125

message on it: "The E-Meter is not intended or effective for
the diagnosis, treatment or prevention of any disease."
  We were going to start with the Pinch Test, Miss Adler
explained, and indicated I should pick up the two tin cans.
She waited until I seemed to be holding them firmly, and then
reached over to pinch my left forearm. She was wearing a very
large orange stone ring on her left hand and I watched it, and
as her hand got closer she watched the needle, and it sprang
for the sky and she said, "Ahh. Anticipation." Yes ma'am.
True. Anticipation. You're going to pinch me, lady. She had,
by the way, made me take off my wedding ring, and I quickly
figured out that its metal might impede or distort any reading
on the meter. So she pinched me. Then she asked me to see
if I could recreate the sensation. I screwed up my face a bit
and summoned up my best Stanislavskian resources, and *I
thought about that pinch*. I tried to make it happen again and
found myself evaluating its quality instead. A good pinch.
Decent. Well executed. The needle, meanwhile, was doing
precious little. Miss Adler said "Good," several times. Which
meant to me, Good, the needle isn't moving, or Good! the
needle moved. It meant something either way.
  Once that was over, she turned the E-Meter away from my
view and said she would now do some simple auditing. I had
put down the cans, which had gotten clammy in my fists. I
picked them up again, quickly, wondering if she might be
mad at me for dawdling. She looked at me. "What do you
think of Scientology?"
  "Well...." What was I going to say? I liked it, I didn't like
it, it frightened me, it didn't frighten me...." I'm confused
by it. There seem to be so many things to learn about it. I
stopped.
  Miss Adler saw I was finished and said, "Thank you,"
slowly, almost formally, and I realized the politesse was part
of the procedure, integral to the consistency of demand and
acknowledgment of answer. So she asked me again, just as

126 SCIENTOLOGY

naturally, her eyes dropping to the meter, which I couldn't
see at all. "What do you think of Scientology?"
  The cans were heavy in my hands and I did not want to
start with another, "Well-" so I looked off to the side, as if
thinking. Could she, I wondered, actually "know" how to read
something From this rather simplistic machine?
  The classic lie detector, or polygraph, had been developed
in the crime detection laboratory at Northwestern University
by Leonard Keeler, a one-time police officer from Berkeley,
California. An article in the January 1967 *Scientific American*
by Burke M. Smith, associate professor of neurology, and psy-
chiatry (clinical psychology) and chief clinical psychologist
at the School of Medicine of the University of Virginia, de-
scribes the standard polygraph as "a simple, compact and
often portable machine that records pulse rate, relative blood
pressure, the rate and depth of breathing and often the
resistance of the skin to the conduction of electricity" and
makes the point that the machine is not specifically a "lie
detector," but something which records physiological changes.
"Any detecting of lies," he wrote, "is done by the examiner,
the person who conducts the interrogation."
  I felt Miss Adler watching me, waiting, so I said, still
wondering about the efficacy of the E-Meter, "I think Scien-
tology is *interesting*....I want to know more about it, but
I'm not sure what it has for me."
  Miss Adler's eyes were now down on the meter and she
said, "Thank you." And then she asked me the same question
again: "What do you think of Scientology?"
  "Nothing," I said evenly, taking the plunge, wondering if
that might not be the right answer. (In his article, Dr. Smith
had written: "The examining session is conducted in an
atmosphere that is inevitably at least somewhat tense....")
  "Good," Miss Adler said just as evenly. "Thank you."
  She went on to ask me the following questions, each two or
three times, each acknowledged with a "Thank you."

                       TECHNIQUES, DRILLS, AND PROCESSES 127

  "Do you have any problems with people?"
  "Do you have any problems with your work?"
  "Do you have any problems with the world at large?"
  With that last one, after answering all the others humbly
and with slight hesitations and mumblings, I allowed myself
a small note of wry bitterness. I said, "Who doesn't these
days?" It was obvious from all three questions that *anything*
I might have felt the least bit worried about, concerned about,
*guilty* about, would have eventually come out, if not then,
then later, when I would be asked, in advanced auditing ses-
sions, to be more specific.
  After a final "Thank you," Miss Adler was finished. She
fixed me with one of those eye-locks and asserted, very
quietly, that I needed the HAS (Hubbard Apprentice Scien-
tologist) Communications Course, that I put myself down a
great deal and she saw that I could use the reinforcement of
the Communications Course. I said I'd think about it.
  The Communications Course is the first course of sessions
you pay for. The cost can run from $15 to $25, depending
upon where you take it, at the central organization offices or
at one of the franchised offices. The Hubbard Association of
Scientologists International, Ltd., only sets the base fees.
  Before going any further into Scientology's techniques and
exercises, I should describe the structure of your path on the
route to Hubbard's Total Freedom. The Communications
Course is the bottom rung of a ladder which leads into audit-
ing and the first two levels: Straight Wire Release and
Dianetic Release. Next comes Grade 0 Release, and then
four more separate Grades, ending in Grade IV. The next step
is to take what is called the DAC, the Dianetics Auditors
Course. Its purpose is twofold, to introduce the importance
of each individual functioning independently as an auditor,
thereby suggesting that studying all the levels of professional
auditing is much more valuable than merely being audited
oneself, and to train one to audit oneself. After the DAC, one

128 SCIENTOLOGY

takes Grade V-VA, also known as *power*. This is followed by
*solo*, Grade VI, and then Grade VII, *clear*, the temporal
summit.
  Scientology's activities are particularly confusing because
at first glance there are no clear-cut lines visible between
when one is expected to do one thing and when one might do
another. To isolate them then: The buying and reading of the
books provides Knowledge; attending and encouraging friends
to attend the free lectures provides Orientation; the Scien-
tology Congresses where one meets other Scientologists, shares
experiences, and listens to tapes of L. Ron Hubbard lectures
offers Enlightenment; the actual processing from one Grade
up to the next is done to achieve Freedom: and the training
courses through which one becomes an auditor offers Ability.
The last, Academy Training, is made infinitely more attractive
to prospective scientologists because it offers achieving *clear*
for a total cost of $3,550, a savings on the $4,025 for achieving
*clear* merely through processing. Elements of the Training
Route, as it is often referred to, will be discussed later. To
begin with, let me get into the Communications Course,
where everyone really gets his start and where so many of
the precepts inherent in Scientology's techniques are firmly
established.
  The experience of a young freelance photographer, Bud
Lee, who was assigned to take some pictures of Scientology in
action, dramatizes both what goes on in the course and how it
is absorbed. Bud signed up for a $750 course which would
have taken him all the way to Grade IV, and prepared himself
for the Communications Course. The first lesson was called
Confrontation, Bud explained, "where we were facing each
other, with our hands on our knees, and we had to sit for an
hour, without moving anything. Which is fine. I really believed
in that. I could see the girl's corona around her, kind of a
yellowish-green halo, and I thought this was great. I didn't

                       TECHNIQUES, DRILLS, AND PROCESSES 129

know whether it was an optical illusion or what, but at least
it was an experience."
  As Bud told me about it, I couldn't help but remember Jack
Kerouac's *On The Road*, when the wild poet, patterned after
Allen Ginsberg, tells the book's narrator: "Dean and I are
embarked on a tremendous season together. We're trying to
communicate with absolute honesty and absolute completeness
everything on our minds. We've had to take benzedrine. We
sit on the bed, cross-legged, facing each other. I have finally
taught Dean that he can do anything he wants, become mayor
of Denver, marry a millionairess, or become the greatest poet
since Rimbaud. But he keeps rushing out to see the midget
auto races...."
  The second session of the Communications Course was
called Bull-Baiting. Says Bud, "I sat across from my partner,
this girl, and we were instructed to be either a coach or a
student. In this case, she was the coach. And of course you're
instructed to say anything; the Bull-Baiting is where they
really break you down. Now the idea, you're supposed to
overcome your subliminal mind and your body and you reach
your optimum. When you've reached that, you've overcome
all your prejudices, handicaps, your shortcomings in other
words. The idea being that you can be happy, there's no need
for any kind of neuroses. You can overcome a common cold,
for example, just by reaching your optimum. So this exercise
is the first of many where they're trying to break you. The
instructress, whose name was Bobbie, or Barbara - she looked
something like Bobble Gentry: long black hair, a very, very
good-looking body, but her eyes were very, very kind of
hard, and she was always smiling and saying, 'Beautiful.'
Every time someone made a comment in the class she'd say
'Beautiful,' or 'Groovy,' or give you a big smile. And she
smoked, and was very, very relaxed. But very apart, not at
all compassionate. Kind of a very withdrawn coolness about
her. But very sharp. Well, the Bull-Baiting starts with - Bobble

130 SCIENTOLOGY

had instructed all the students to sit in the same position as
they sat in in the previous exercise, with your hands on your
knees, upright, relaxed, and you're not allowed to move any-
thing. If you move - like I have a tendency of dropping my
shoulder - if they see something move, they yell, 'Flunk!' and
then 'Start!' Your coach will tell you what you did. Well, the
instructress started working on my bald head, and my pot
belly." Bud is not bald. His hair is thinning and he is con-
cerned about it and quite openly vulnerable to the notion that
somebody would criticize him for that. He also does not have
a pot belly. He is a large-framed person, with a kind young
face, unexpected small lines of concern around his eyes, and
a manner that is a trifle hesitant, but ultimately honest and
quite unafraid. "She assumed I was a Madison Avenue ad
account executive or something. She didn't think of me as
anything else. And she looked at me and said, 'Your *affluent*
belly,' and then, 'You go by that window every morning and
you say, Maybe I should buy it, what would the boys in the
office think? And then one day you bought some of this cream
and you started working with this cream, and it said on the
package that it would grow hair -' she started working on
that. To me, she really wasn't that insulting because she really
didn't get that far. She said that they don't call a cripple a
cripple, or a black man a black man - there was this woman in
the class who didn't have a chin, and obviously that point was
made for her. And a lot of Negroes, a lot of different ethnic
groups. So she said you work on other things, things that are
not so obvious. The upshot was that I would laugh, and she
explained that laughing is the emotion that is closest to the
surface; you laugh before you cry."
  Bud never took the last two sessions of the Communications
Course. Later that evening, because he had been openly
taking photographs, he was expelled and his money refunded.
He was very upset, particularly because he was desperately
interested to find out what was going to happen next.

                       TECHNIQUES, DRILLS, AND PROCESSES 131

  What happened next is a session called "Dear Alice." It was
described to me by Gary Watkins, the once highly placed
Scientologist who was expelled by the movement for involving
himself with a splinter group Hubbard felt was threatening
him. The purpose of Dear Alice, Gary said, is "to increase
your intention in communication, your ability to reach another
person with exactly what you intended to reach them, rather
than have your communication go off astray. It's done by
reading out of a book, "Alice in Wonderland." You look down
at the book and you look at the other person and you say: 'It's
a Cheshire Cat.' Then you find another phrase in the book,
and you go." When done properly, Hubbard has said, the
exercise increases "your 'ownership' of a communication. You
look down at the book, you *own* that phrase, it's yours, you
deliver it like it's yours." Says Gary Watkins, "People learn
that book by heart before they're finished."
  The next part of the exercise is something called Termina-
tion. "When somebody reads out of Dear Alice," Gary ex-
plained, "and says, 'It's a Cheshire Cat,' the other person says,
'Thank you.'" This is done "to increase your ability to acknowl-
edge others, and acknowledge in a manner that means not
just 'Thank you,' but End of Cycle. Completion of Communi-
cation. Over and Out. Or STOP. And very often that's what
a Scientologist learns: 'Thank you. Stop.' Shut up. In Scien-
tology, the thank-yous mean Completion of that cycle of
Communication. Start a new cycle."
  The final exercise in the Communications Course is one
designed to increase ownership through "the ability to dupli-
cate. Using Dear Alice, or some other text, one person reads
off to another person, and that person has to tell them back
specifically what they said. In all these exercises," Gary points
out, "one is always in the auditor's position, or role, the other
is the auditee."
  At one time, the "termination" or "acknowledgment" drill
was done using the E-Meter, to accustom students to the fact

132 SCIENTOLOGY

that something they say produces a "read" on the meter. Any-
one taking the Training Route towards becoming a profes-
sional auditor would also take several TR's, Training Drills,
which are not included in the usual Communications Course.
TR's 0 through 2 are similar to the Confrontation, Bull-Baiting,
and various uses of Dear Alice. TR 3 is called "duplicate
question," meant "to duplicate without variation an auditing
question, each time newly, in its own unit of time, not as a
blur with other questions, and to acknowledge it." Asking
such questions as "Do fish swim? Do birds fly?" students
would do them again and again, for hours, striving to achieve
repetition with no variations. In TR 4, a student auditor's
coach would try to throw a student off by being difficult and
not repeating "Do fish swim?" as directed. It becomes the
student's task to make absolutely sure he can elicit a precise
duplication each and every time, no matter what obstructions
occur.
  Once the Communications Course is over, you decide
whether you want to take straight processing to achieve Free-
dom, or the Training Route to improve Ability as well as
achieve Freedom. Anyone who decides to take straight process-
ing begins with what is called Straight Wire Release, defined
on Scientology's "Classification Gradation And Awareness
Chart of Levels and Certificates" as achieving "Improvement
in Memory and Ability to Recall." Before going into it, I have
to emphasize a fundamental scientological principle basic to
all processes and exercises. Hubbard described it in his book,
*The Creation of Human Ability*: "The first goal which an
Auditor much achieve is willingness in the preclear to receive
directions. The condition of the preclear is such, in nearly all
cases, that he has chosen as a main point of resistance in life,
direction of himself other than his own." The result, Hubbard
explains, is the continuous resistance on man's part to direction
from the outside, which also weakens his ability to direct

                       TECHNIQUES, DRILLS, AND PROCESSES 133

himself and, "it is the ability to direct himself which the
Auditor is seeking to return to the preclear."
  Every auditing session begins with a rigidly followed rou-
tine. The auditor must make sure that the preclear is comfort-
able in the particular room they are in. The auditor then
says, "Start of session!" and they begin. In Straight Wire Re-
lease, three basic questions are asked: "Recall a communica-
tion. Recall something real. Recall an emotion." This continues
as the preclear remembers various events or objects, gripping
the cans until the moment his auditor tells him he has achieved
Release, a needle which floats freely and no longer jumps on
any of the answers given to those three questions: "Recall a
communication. Recall something real. Recall an emotion."
  The next level is called Dianetic Release and is designed,
according to the chart, for "Erasure of Loss and Misemotion."
The session consists of two questions, essentially: "Recall
a loss. Recall a misemotion." This is certainly a far cry from
the extensive auditing which was done during the Dianetics
era with the auditee in *dianetic reverie*. Church of Scientology
Minister Bob Thomas explained the more important differ-
ences in the new level of release. "Some of the early reverie
technology that was used," he told me, "smacked a little bit
of hypnosis, but certainly we don't use anything like that any
more. It's not necessary. A person is fully aware, fully awake,
fully alert, and no suggestions are made to him whatsoever.
We start out in Dianetics by simply asking him to recall
moments when he felt as though he liked somebody, moments
when he felt he was experiencing something really real,
moments when he felt he really understood something, things
like this, which just kind of increases ability to recall. And
then we go into a little bit deeper incident, and then a little
bit deeper. But it's strictly a general question and command
that's given to him, such as 'locate an incident.' And then we
say, 'Okay, go to the beginning of it, move through it to the
end, and tell me what's happening.' And that's it."

134 SCIENTOLOGY

  Grade 0 Communications Release gives one "Ability to
communicate freely with anyone on any subject." Bob Thomas
gave me an example of the type of question an auditor might
ask. "'If you could communicate to *blank* - whatever or who-
ever the person is having difficulty communicating to - put in
that *blank*.' So he's having difficulty communicating with his
wife; you'd say, 'If you could communicate to a *wife*, what
would you talk about?' And then when we get a subject, we
say, 'If you were talking to a wife about *that*, what would
you say exactly?' Until the person feels much more at ease
about communicating to that particular person or terminal, as
we call it." Much more generally, this Grade is also run with
two simple questions: "What are you willing to tell me about?
What are you willing to tell me about it?" The most specific
question anyone is ever asked during auditing, according to
Thomas, is: "Should you have told me something you didn't?"
  Grade I Release concerns Problems and acquiring the "Abil-
ity to recognize source of problems and make them vanish."
The procedure is simply naming various problems and discuss-
ing possible solutions. The subjects covered can range from
finances to sex to suicide to athlete's foot.
  Grade II is Relief Release and involves achieving "Relief
from hostilities and sufferings of life." The two areas dealt
with on this grade are called "Overts" and "Withholds." The
*Scientology Abridged Dictionary*, a copy of which every
*preclear* is quick to purchase, defines an "Overt" as a "Harm-
ful or contra-survival act...an act of commission or omission
that harms the greater number of dynamics....A failure to
eradicate something or stop someone that would harm broadly
would be an overt act." A "Withhold" is defined as an "undis-
closed contra-survival act...in which the individual has done
or been an accessory to doing something which is a transgres-
sion against some moral or ethical code...." This Grade is
achieved by answering two questions: "What have you done?
What haven't you said?"

                       TECHNIQUES, DRILLS, AND PROCESSES 135

Grade III is called Freedom Release, "Freedom from the
upsets of the past and ability to face the future." Scientology
defines upsets as ARC breaks, breaks in the triangle of Affinity-
Reality-Communications. The E-Meter is particularly impor-
tant at this level because it is used to fix the date of any
important ARC break. This is done by using what Scientology
calls the "Over and Under" technique of asking questions
pertaining to the sought-for date. The date is finally tracked
down by process of elimination. When the incident has been
properly fixed, it is rerun in detail until Release from it is
achieved.
  Grade IV is Ability Release, "Moving out of fixed conditions
and gaining abilities to do new things." The general subject
which is audited is something called "Service Facsimiles,"
defined as "an aberrated, non-survival solution the preclear
uses to make others wrong, self right, to aid the survival of
self, hinder the survival of others, help self dominate others
and help escape domination." It is a combination of realizing
when you have been passing the buck, as well as appreciating
the intensity of your own determination to survive. The ques-
tion asked is "What method have you used to make others
wrong during your life?" Answers are written down, and with
the aid of the E-Meter one particular incident is isolated and
dissected in terms of its having been just such a "service
facsimile."
  All auditing sessions end the same way. A *preclear* is sent
to a department known as Technical Services where some-
body makes sure the *preclear* has truly ended the auditing
session. This has been done by slowing down the pace of the
questioning and initiating a careful reorientation to one's sur-
roundings, bringing them back into "present time," sometimes
accompanied with a demand from the auditor to have the
preclear "Tell me I am no longer auditing you."
  Achieving Grade IV in Scientology is known as having
"done your Grades." Looking back on them, I remembered

136 SCIENTOLOGY

how Bob Thomas had broadly summarized what succeeding
at each Grade level is meant to produce. "What we're really
trying to do is increase the person's confidence in being able
to remember what he wants to remember and not remember
what he doesn't want to remember; increase his confidence in
being able to control his memories...."
  It is at this point, after Grade IV Release, that you as a
scientologist will decide whether or not to go into Scientology
training. To continue up the ladder towards *clear* it is now
necessary for you to take the Dianetics Auditors Course, which
teaches the rudiments of auditing. Hubbard stresses the
course's importance because in it, a person "learns the anatomy
of the human mind, and gains practical experience in handling
it in actual auditing sessions." The levels or Classes of Acad-
emy Training approximate the progress a *preclear* makes in
his Grades, except that there is a somewhat different pattern
of emphasis. You receive not only auditing, but "A Theory
Course, with the appropriate certificate and a Practical Course
with its levels of classification. The levels follow each other in
a smooth gradient, and each level is properly mastered before
the student progresses confidently to the next level." Local
organizations can train you to Level IV, just as they can
process somebody to Grade IV. Advanced levels and Grades
are achieved, as was mentioned earlier, either at Saint Hill or
at the new Los Angeles headquarters.
  As I said, the essential difference between Academy Train-
ing and straight processing is initially one of intensity. As Gary
Watkins described a person who takes the Training Route,
"They'll take the Communications Course, but for weeks, the
face-to-face stuff. Until they're letter perfect. They'll do one
for one hour straight, and then another. Then they'll begin a
process called 'Give me that hand,' a Havingness process, a
Communications-Control-Havingness process." The drills in
this group are called CCH's, and "Give me that hand" is
CCH 1. "This," Gary went on to explain to me, "is definitely

                       TECHNIQUES, DRILLS, AND PROCESSES 137

an auditor-preclear situation, where the auditor and preclear
sit across from one another - the student in training is not
being audited, but the situation is exactly as it will be when
CCH 1 is used in actual auditing - and one person makes an
indication to their right hand and says, 'Give me that hand.'
They get the hand, they shake it, they acknowledge getting
it, say 'Thank you,' and then they place the hand back in the
lap. They'll do that for as long as it takes to 'flatten' it, mean-
ing they have successfully done it three times without change."
To "flatten" is also an E-Meter needle term, but applies to
other facets of Scientology drilling as well. Gary continues:
"They're thus doing it under the auditor's control, based upon
the premise that the average person does not feel he is suffi-
ciently in control of his life. By accepting the auditor's control,
he therefore somehow gets the idea that *he* could control
*himself* more.
  "Then there is CCH 2, which is the auditor standing beside
the preclear, pointing to a wall, saying 'You look at that wall.'
Thank you. 'You walk over to the wall.' They walk over
together. He says, 'Thank you.' The preclear is supposed to
stop in front of the wall. 'Touch the wall.' 'Thank you.' 'Turn
around.' 'Thank you.' And you start again...until it's flat.
Everybody's pre-informed of what it's all going to be, and
what they're going to do. There are some absolutely wild,
fantastic things that happen to people during these exercises.
You would think it's a very simple procedure, but it is not.
Certainly on a repetitive basis it's not. Every psychotic ten-
dency that you would imagine could come out of a person
when they're asked to do these things. Very few people come
in and do them cold. People will scream; everything comes
up: their resistance to authority, their objection to control,
their tendencies towards sickness, certain somatic illnesses or
pains they are not even aware of; because they are habitually
attempting to shut off their awareness, and suddenly they'll get
into better communication with their body and they'll scream,

138 SCIENTOLOGY

and then they'll remember the specific incident relating to the
pain.
  "CCH 3 is 'Put your hand against mine.' You put your hands
up. 'Follow and contribute to their motion -'" This CCH is
also known as Hand Space Mimicry "- at which point you'll
make a series of motions like this." Gary moves his hand
around, the palm up, flat, as if someone's was being held
against it, his movements decisive and varied. "First with your
right hand and then with your left. It can be *beautiful* to do
because ideally, perfect duplication and harmony with an-
other person is a marvelous thing. If it's not overdone. And if
a person is rational enough to appreciate what's happening.
It brings a person's awareness and attention right, like that!"
He snaps his fingers with a loud crack. "The rest of the
CCH is: 'Put your hands one inch from mine. Thank you.'
And you do the same thing. That's when it really is a groovy
scene. That can be a ball. You do that up to a distance of three
feet and after each time the preclear is asked: 'Did you con-
tribute to their motion?' No matter what they say, you con-
tinue. Ideally, the answer is Yes, but it wouldn't matter; if
they say No three times, it's flat. If they said 'No' three times
the same way, without any significant change. It turns on
automaticities: a person can start twitching, some people have
eyeballs turn blood red and raw and then go back down
again. A lot of things will turn up. This is a way, in Hubbard's
language, of stimulating incidents, ailments, impulses, circuits,
mental circuits, under control, that are stimulated by life out
of control, and just wonk you, rather than you commanding
the situation.
  "CCH 4, you take a book - it's a silent process," also known
as Book Mimicry, "and you say, 'I'm going to take this book
and I want you to duplicate this motion.' And you do any-
thing you want with it: hand it to them, etc., and that brings
people's attention straight into present time, they're right with
you. Some people can't do that. Their attention shoots out,

                       TECHNIQUES, DRILLS, AND PROCESSES 139

because duplication is their factor, it's their out-factor and
they're not good at it."
  Looking at all of the CCH's, Gary says, "The first two are
really 'turn-on' processes. They really bring up a lot of crap.
Their purpose is to turn on, under control, those impulses or
responses that life is ordinarily 'restimulating in you,' and
therefore you experience it, observe it, key it out, to use his
term, 'Key it out so it is no longer impinging upon you.'
Under control The second two will do that to some people to
some degree but most often are present-time processes. Some
people have trouble with CCH 3, but CCH 3 and 4 should
be pure fun, you should be sailing right out of the muck you
were in with CCH 1 and 2."
  A person taking the Training Route will also learn some-
thing called Assists. There are two types. Physical Assists
would be used if someone hurt something, like an arm. The
student would learn to touch the area around the injury and
say, at the same time, "Notice my fingers. Thank you. Notice
my fingers. Thank you." And continue doing this around the
injured area until it got better. The other type of assists in-
volve someone coming in to a Scientology organization with
a problem. An auditor would ask "Where was it? Thank you.
When was it? Thank you. Who was involved? Thank you.
What did the situation look like? Thank you." As Gary
described it, "To get the person separated from that incident
so that they're actually *looking* at the incident rather than
being in it." This would be somewhat similar to the straight
auditing technique used by a Class I Auditor to resolve
general problems. Having asked "Do you have a present-time
problem?" he would try to locate it and work it out according
to what Hubbard labeled a situation's "intention," and its
"counter-intention." As Gary put it, "What Hubbard really
gets involved with in terms of problems and present-time
problems he calls desensitizing problems."
  To become a proficient auditor is not merely a question of

140 SCIENTOLOGY

absorbing techniques. Says Minister Thomas, "It takes a great
deal of training. To be a highest level graduate auditor takes,
oh, probably between six months and a year of intensive
training. And by intensive training I mean full-time training,
as much as six to ten hours a day. It's comparable to several
years of college, I would say, in terms of hours."
  As you as a student auditor progress up through the levels,
listening to lectures and taking courses and becoming first a
Hubbard Apprentice Scientologist, then a Hubbard Qualified
Scientologist, then a Hubbard Recognized Scientologist, then
a Hubbard Trained Scientologist, then a Hubbard Certified
Auditor, then a Hubbard Professional Auditor, then a Hub-
bard Advanced Auditor, then a Hubbard Validated Auditor,
then a Hubbard Senior Scientologist, and finally, at the same
time as achieving *clear*, a Hubbard Graduate Auditor, you
become more and more familiar with the many drills and
intricacies of operating the E-Meter.
  The first few sessions involve simple familiarization, such
as simply touching the meter and then letting it go. You learn
all the knobs and controls, how to calibrate, how to set it up
on a table, how to squeeze the cans and thus how to direct a
future *preclear* to squeeze the cans, and how to read the tone
arm. A "read" on the meter is anything which shows up within
a tenth of a second of a question having been asked. As you
progress, you learn the various needle actions, each with a
different name: "Theta bop," "Rock slam," "Free needle,"
"Rocket read," "Tick," and others, such as "Stuck," "Null,"
"Speeded rise," "Slowed rise," and "Stop." To familiarize you
with reading the meter, a list called the "Preclear Origination
Sheet" is used. You hold the cans, watch the meter, and read
off this list which presumably duplicates most of the standard
responses you will hear from a *preclear*. "I have a pain in my
stomach." "WOW - I didn't know that before." "This processing
is worth the fee." "OUCH, OH OUCH." "Your eyes stink."
And about one hundred others.
  You then learn what causes a "read" on a meter, and how

                       TECHNIQUES, DRILLS, AND PROCESSES 141

that "read" is "cleaned." "Cleaning" a read means locating its
source. The exercise uses a particular passage from a book
which creates a small "read," or "tick." The passage is reread
until the one source of the "tick" is isolated and the "tick"
itself is precisely duplicated.
  Isolating dates is made more sophisticated in a drill called
Track Dating. There are no set commands, but any date within
hundreds of trillions of years can be set, beginning with round
numbers such as "150 billion trillion years ago." This is lo-
cated, using questions to indicate the "order of magnitude"
of the date: seconds, minutes, days, years, tens of thousands of
years...short of ad infinitum. "The last step of this drill,"
according to *The Book of E-Meter Drills*, which has been
compiled by Mary Sue Hubbard, "the coach writes down a
full date like this: *56,276,345,829,100 years ago, 315 days, 42
hours, 15 minutes, and 10 seconds*." Using a "greater-than
lesser-than" technique, you're supposed eventually to hit the
date on the button.
  You learn to differentiate "reads" of varying magnitudes by
using prepared assessment lists on various subjects: "What is
your favorite dog? Which tree do you like the best? Which
fruit tastes the best?" etc., each question followed by a long
list of fruits, trees, or dogs, each with its own "read." Gary
Watkins explains applying this technique in actual auditing.
"You found a goal by reading off a list of goals - the list is a
list of lifetime goals prepared by that person - and you got a
particular read on a goal. You found their goal, and their goal
is to be a fish. So you've got this list and you say 'Who or
What would want to be a fish?' because you want to find an
Identity Terminal. A terminal or identity that they have as-
sumed or borrowed from regularly in order to achieve that
goal, or the identity they're trying to create all the time to
achieve that goal. So you would say - you don't know which
one it is - you say, 'Who or What would want to be a fish?' and
you have a list." The person answers. "'Good. Who or What would
want to be a fish?' 'A fish.' 'Good. Who or What would

142 SCIENTOLOGY

want to be a fish?' 'Well, a turtle.' 'Good. 'Who or What would
want to be a fish?' 'Well, an octopus.' Fine. So you have this
whole list, it's on this list somewhere, and it's got a particular
kind of read. The right identity has what you call a Rocket
Read that goes Pshoow! You read the question and the
needles floating this way -" Gary holds a stiff palm up and
then allows it the slightest, smooth undulation "- and 'Who or
What would want to be a fish?' and they say, 'A turtle,' and
Ptchui!" His hand swings down to one side like a lunging
needle sucked to earth. "It takes off and then comes right
back up." The point of the student using the assessment list
is that he learns to know when that "read" has occurred. Such
training can continue for many many hours. Says Gary, "You
have to assess a list: 'Apples. Pears. Peaches. Sharks. Octo-
puses. Turtles,'- you're watching the meter while you're doing
this. 'Apples. Peaches. Pears....' You're not paying any
attention to the person, couldn't care less, they're there as a
convenience. You don't ignore them, but it's the 'reads' they
produce which you're interested in." Where this process would
be used would be at CLASS III, Auditing by List, what Gary
calls "a very soft process."
  But Auditing by List is important both in Academy Train-
ing and in Straight Processing. If you're receiving straight
processing you may be asked, at almost any level, a general
question such as: "Who might want to harm *blank*?" blank
being an object, place, or person. And then you would be
asked a list of a hundred items, each of which would match
with something or someone who might want to harm that
object, place, or person. The object which might be harmed is
located, and then the "Who" of the question is located.
  All of these drills and processes bring you closer to handling
L. Ron Hubbard's predetermined concepts of what does or does
not exist, with facility. *Power processing*, which is Grade V-VA,
is based on mental manipulation of simple questions, as for
example in the first part of Grade V, where one might be
asked "What is no-source?" In the second part of V there

                       TECHNIQUES, DRILLS, AND PROCESSES 143

would be two questions: "What exists?" "What have you done
about it?" In Grade V-VA, you run names of people, and it
can go on endlessly, as you, the *preclear*, locate a name which
produces a "read" on the meter. The reason for the "read" is
discovered and whatever "charge" there is on that name is
flattened, as you are made to realize how you were victimized
by the person in question, and how you victimized that person
in return. If this appears somehow simplistic, you must remem-
ber that by Grade V-VA you know exactly what is being
asked; Scientology has become a living language and the
structure of existence as seen by Scientology is firmly estab-
lished. To protect you from outside influences, when you take
*power processes*, you wear a small tag pinned to your cloth-
ing: "I Am On Power Processes," it reads. "Please Do Not
Ask Me Questions, Audit Me, or Discuss My Case With Me."
The process itself can be run for fifteen minutes or fifteen days.
  Grade VI, or solo, developed from Hubbard's theories about
the existence of past goals, how they are implanted, and how
we can free ourselves from their negative influences. Working
in terms of goals, he evolved something called a Line Plot.
On one side he wrote Terminal, which would represent what
you wished to be. On the other side he wrote Opposition
Terminal, which would be anything that might make it diffi-
cult for you to achieve your goal. This plotting looked some-
thing like this:

                                          OPPOSITION
    TERMINAL                               TERMINAL

(GOAL) TO BE A
        DOCTOR  \
                     \
                           \
                                \
                                     \  SICK PEOPLE
                                     /
                                /
                           /
                     /
                /
      DRUGGIST  \
                     \
                           \
                                \
                                     \  SNAKE OIL SALES-
                                     /  MAN
                                /
                           /
                     /
                /
   A POLICEMAN  \
                     \
                           \
                                \
                                     \  A THIEF

144 SCIENTOLOGY

If your goal was to be a doctor, an opposition goal would be
sick people - their existence would represent an opposition to
becoming a doctor - and they, in turn, would be opposed by
the existence of a druggist who might sell drugs which would
cure them. The druggist, in turn, would be opposed by the
snake oil salesman, who would be opposed by a policeman,
who would be opposed by a thief. *Und so veiter*.
  From this, Hubbard deduced that the accurate plotting
must be done in terms of creation and destruction, based on
his belief that in a cycle of action everything is an act of
creation, and thus the creation of a negative was equal to the
destruction of a positive, in other words, the negation of a
negation. For the process itself, *solo*, you, the *preclear*, use a
special E-Meter with a window in it so that you can look
through it and see what you are writing and at the same time
observe the needle and see when you have successfully
"Blown Off" mass - the Mass of Goals-Problems-Mass. The Line
Plot itself might look something like this as you work down it:

    TO CREATE                             YOU DESTROY
UN-UNDERSTANDINGNESS                     UNDERSTANDING
UN-INTELLIGENCENESS                      INTELLIGENCE

  Once you have completed and been Released in Grade VI,
*solo*, you are ready to go on to Grade VII, the achievement of
*clear*. It is virtually impossible to know exactly how somebody
makes *clear* right now because the techniques in Scientology
change so often. Gary Watkins told me that at one time new
bulletins from Hubbard were coming in as often as once a
week, while the longest any particular process or technique
stayed around was five months. If you ask why such constant
change didn't confuse people, didn't and doesn't make them
suspicious, I can only say that I found it did at times confuse
them, but that all this new data was coming in, hot off the
Telex wires, and out-weighed the confusion; it was proof that

                       TECHNIQUES, DRILLS, AND PROCESSES 145

L. Ron Hubbard - wherever he might be - was working away
to perfect every aspect of Scientology, purifying the tech-
niques, making them better and better. As far as going *clear*
is concerned, I know that you can make it either *solo* or with
an auditor; someone cleared recently on a list of twenty ques-
tions, being absolutely *clear* on every one of them. If the
definition of a Release is, as Gary put it, "being someone who
knows at this point that they're not going to get any worse in
life; they've reached a certain level of awareness and ability
and they'll never get worse," then a *clear* must be someone
who has achieved Release - I don't think it's wrong to use the
word Insight for Release - in every aspect of his MEST life.
My conclusions are that the *clear* processes themselves are
probably amalgamations of all the preceding techniques, taken
to the point where you can demonstrate not only control over
communications, over the source of problems, the achievement
of relief, the expression of Freedom, the knowing of Ability,
and the possession of Power, but the management of negations
as well, which is the beginning of those processes designed to
lead to something known as exteriorization - what we usually
call dissociation, a sense of total separation from your body.
The levels of these processes are called the O.T. Levels, the
grades of *operating thetans*.
  Before I get into the O.T. Levels, I should digress to ex-
plain something which will help in understanding this concept
of exteriorization, as well as the notions of negating which are
so important to Scientology.
  Hubbard had at one time called the structuring of the Line
Plot used in *solo*, R6EW, for Route 6 End Words. The Scien-
tology dictionary defines this as words which create "locks,
words that are not in the GPM's but...are close in meaning
to significances that are part of the GPM's. They keep large
parts of the Reactive Mind in restimulation." Running this
process had at one time been the door to *clear*: Understand-
ing-Nix-understanding; Communication-Nix-Communication.

146 SCIENTOLOGY

Apparently John McMasters, the world's first *clear*, cleared
on this very process, the negation of negations of negations,
breaking through to envision the entire structure of existence
precisely as L. Ron Hubbard had defined it, seeing this
enormous, pomegranate-like mass, joined by bonds of agree-
ments, a mass of goals held together within a person and
forcing him to automatically negate reality without knowing
what he was doing. R6EW was the process which unlocked
those bonds and finally, by looking at both sides of the Graph -
CREATE and DESTROY - demonstrating that only by negat-
ing a negation can one finally be *clear* and Totally Free.
  The structured progression in Scientology processing and
training only appeared in 1965. Before that there were various
levels of attainment, but they were not codified to the extent
of being defined as preceding one another in strict fashion.
The reason for the structure was the discovery that running a
person on a process designed for someone on a lower level
was dangerous. Gary Watkins was one of the auditors who, as
he explained, discovered "that if you had raised a person's
ability and awareness to a certain point and then ran them
on a lower level process, you did them in, and ran them back
down." He found this out by working with a woman who,
until 1958, had been extremely successful in business and in
Scientology. She was being run on some of Hubbard's Creative
Processes when her processing was changed. Says Gary,
"Rather than running her on that, Hubbard abandoned that
line of processing and some nut at some center ran her on a
particular process called O.W. - General O.W., which means
Overt Withhold: 'What have you done? What have you with-
held?' - which that woman needed like a... At any rate she
was run on this for *weeks*. It drove her down, it started her
on a downhill trend that ran until the winter of 1965." The
woman began to drink, her marriage broke up, and she lost
her job. Quite simply, she could not absorb the new insights
and concepts she had been shifted onto, and it affected her

                       TECHNIQUES, DRILLS, AND PROCESSES 147

much the same way a behavioral psychologist affects a rat in
a maze when he wants to drive it crazy: he takes the existing
"logic" of the rat's existence and replaces it with another
"logic" or pattern or whatever you want to call it. Whatever
it is, it is too much for the tortured animal to absorb, and it
goes nuts. The woman, because she was a far more complex
mechanism, did not quite go nuts, but she was damn close to
it when Gary set out to discover what was wrong with her.
"I said, 'Let's find out when the trouble started,' and we
traced it back and we found it was in 1958. I notified the Org,
and I said, 'This is critical!' They teletyped the information
to Ron and it came out in a Bulletin two weeks later. And
at that point he designed this chart - " the Gradation Chart
" - saying nobody who had reached a certain level could be
run at a lower level."
  The Gradation Chart made its appearance in May of 1965.
A few days later, in an HCO Policy Letter, Hubbard directed
that 'Persons who have attained Release may not thereafter
be audited on any processes except Assists, By Passed Charge
Assessments, Present Time Problems and Missed Withholds
['What have you done? What have you withheld?'] until they
are trained up to Level VI and started on R6 processes....
The next action for a person who has attained Release is to
take the next Course in Scientology and move on through to
Clear properly. This is shown on the Gradation Chart....
There is no other way to Clear." The policy letter strikes me
as being as close as Hubbard ever came to admitting that
Scientology techniques advanced through nothing less than
trial and error which, when you are dealing with people, is
not the best way to reassure them that you always know what
you are doing.
  It took Gary a long time to locate the source of the woman's
trouble. "She came," he recalls, "and I let her talk for a while.
We cleaned up some things, some auditing errors that had
been made....There were specific ways to clean up auditing

148 SCIENTOLOGY

errors. There were two ways to do it. *Really* the way to do it
is to get the person to start talking, and when they hit it,
they'd know. And they'd get so upset, *you'd* know. That would
be the main thing, you'd say to yourself, 'Yes, I've found the
trouble.' And then say, to them, 'Could you tell me a little
more about *that*?' At the same time, by watching the meter,
you would know because it would start flying all over the
place. Or it would get stuck. One or the other."
  The woman had been run on an Exteriorization Process
called Grand Tour, described in *The Creation of Human
Ability*. It is defined as instructing the *preclear* to move to
different points in space, to which Hubbard adds, "In the
Grand Tour it is more important for the preclear to locate and
occupy exact locations in space and in objects than it is for
him to examine the surrounding areas." The woman, who had
had no difficulty with the process, was being told to occupy
several spaces, among them the top of the Empire State Build-
ing and the top of the George Washington Bridge. When she
was taken off this process, she fell apart. Today, apparently
free of Scientology, she is, according to Gary, "doing all
right." More he could not tell me.
  So that you don't think exteriorization is something like
simply "imagining" yourself to be somewhere - the places the
woman was told to occupy were chosen arbitrarily, it didn't
matter where she was told to be - look at it this way: You
physically occupy a particular place, and then you go "out of"
yourself, knowing full well that you are still in your original
place, and "be" elsewhere. It doesn't have to be far away. One
girl told me, with an expression of small rapture, how she had
come into do Grade IV, and while she was doing it, suddenly
"exteriorized." "I suddenly *saw* myself, the whole bit, sitting
in that room. I was watching myself do Grade IV and I knew
it was me there doing it." She shivered at this point, but it
was a shiver of excitement. I mentioned before that exterioriza-
tion could be called dissociation, which is a splitting off of

                       TECHNIQUES, DRILLS, AND PROCESSES 149

certain mental processes from the main body of consciousness.
When you dissociate, you do see yourself as if from the out-
side. It is not just the power of suggestion.
  Though the Creative Processes did not seem to work well
with everyone, Hubbard was intrigued by their potential and
never abandoned them completely. As Gary explained it to me,
"Most people weren't up to it. He [Hubbard] found it was
helpful to a point, but he couldn't stabilize a case at that level.
He would help them up to fantastic levels of ability, but he
had tremendous problems. He could not stabilize a case at the
level he could help them achieve. People could create actions,
and *do* things that were out of accord with their responsibility
level."* The challenge was to raise the responsibility level.
With time, as the Grades of Release were further developed,
that responsibility level was achieved. In 1968, Hubbard an-
nounced what he called "100 Percent Gains Attainable by
Standard Tech." Each and every process now works exactly as
it is defined. The data used is stable. Everything works. The
refinement and redefinition of the early Creative Processes
had weeded out the failures, while the more esoteric tech-
niques were now ready to be used. It is these which have now
been restructured into the levels above *clear*, the Grades of
*operating thetan*.
  I do not know exactly what goes on above *clear*. The levels
there are designated O.T. (*operating thetan*) levels, and there
are eight of them, all available at a special 5 percent discount fee
of $2,850. Scientology brochures explain that O.T. I is a step
above *clear*, and in O.T. II "a being further expands, regains
abilities and becomes ready for O.T. III." In O.T. III, "the
student goes through the 'Wall of Fire' that no one could even
approach without resultant sickness and death before L. Ron

* As an example, Gary suggested a brilliant salesman, silver-tongued and
immensely persuasive, who can *sell* you a million dollars worth of goods,
but then cannot deliver because he has not worked up to the million-
dollar level in terms of stocking and supplying.

150 SCIENTOLOGY

Hubbard found the way for you to go through safely and reach
the other side, shining and free from the curtain of degradation
that has hung like a poisonous veil over this planet." What
Hubbard sees to be the "Wall of Fire," I don't know. I asked
Gary Watkins if he could explain which abilities Hubbard
would be perfecting at the O.T. levels. "They could be any-
thing," he said. "Reading people's minds, communicating with-
out verbal sounds, lifting objects at will, the ability to ex-
teriorize and be at any point on the planet at your own
decision, without negating your responsibility for having a
body - if you ask me now I can tell you if it's raining in Wash-
ington - that type of thing." Gary rejected actually *doing* any
of these things as cheap parlor tricks. When I pressed him
on what a person would do with such super-abilities, he ex-
plained that it was suddenly realizing you *could* do them
which was important, an explanation which coincides with
Scientology's definition of the O.T. V Course: "Gradient scale
drills to handle matter, energy, space and time from outside
your body," and the O.T. VII Course where "one confronts at
source the origination of thought and progresses up to realms
wherein is revealed the total truths of spiritual existence and
power."
  Gary explained this more prosaically. "The ability to have
full awareness in present time," is how he put it, "knowingly,
so that you knew what was going on. You could walk into a
room and be fully aware of eleven conversations at the same
time and walk around and call people by name and contribute
to the conversations at the right moment. A tremendous ability
to command others, for worthwhile purposes, with affinity, in
an enjoyable manner; have people do as you would have them
do. Tremendous auditing ability in all counseling and per-
ceptive abilities. The ability not to be subject, emotionally, to
people who are victimizing themselves as a solution to life.
Also, to destroy an object at will if you wanted." As to what
processes are being used, Gary says, "If it is an extension of

                       TECHNIQUES, DRILLS, AND PROCESSES 151

what I know they're doing to that point then it would be
helping a person clear up their resistance to abilities which
they have - " those abilities he mentioned before.
  Once a person has become *clear* and has learned to negate
negations, there are still, as Gary put it, "many areas of life
which he doesn't want to confront and is unwilling to do." He
is unwilling, at that point, to steal - the concept of eradicating
resistances is something within his capacity, "but he does not
like stealing in the actual world." Hubbard, at these levels,
does not say there are things people dislike, he simply says
that there "is something they *cannot* do. Then," Gary continues,
explaining how Hubbard might structure the advanced tech-
niques on the O.T. levels, "you have to raise your ability to
confront What Is, and your willingness to be Cause over What
Is, therefore get the idea of somebody stealing something
therefore get the idea of stealing something. And the person
says, 'Yes, I could have that command.' Boom! What else don't
you like, what Effect in life would you be unwilling to be
Cause over?"
  Jack Horner defined it somewhat more specifically. "The
Level VI materials - " the O.T. levels progress from I through
VIII, " - leave a person in the position where he is pretty well
in control of his own existence, his own life. One of the things
about clear is that you realize you are surrounded by people
still reacting to their own environment, who are not clear.
There's not much game when you've got to play it alone. So
the O.T. techniques go into the control and handling of the
other dynamics." What Horner thinks they're using are the
Route I exteriorization techniques from Hubbard's book *The
Creation of Human Ability*, for example R1-4, which is "be
three feet back of your head." Other processes in this Route
direct the person to "mock up" things and then either destroy
them or sustain them. By "mock up," Scientology means "a
mental model, construction or picture created by a *thetan*".
  One exteriorization process which is only whispered about,

152 SCIENTOLOGY

but which everybody seems to know about, is called R2-.45,
and is one of the 75 Route 2 processes also discussed in *The
Creation of Human Ability*. No description accompanies its
mention in the book. Only a small note: AN ENORMOUSLY
EFFECTIVE PROCESS FOR EXTERIORIZATION BUT ITS
USE IS FROWNED UPON BY THIS SOCIETY AT THIS
TIME. What the process stands for, I was told, is R2-.45, the
.45 being a .45 pistol. Hubbard is said to have marched out
onto center stage at one of the Scientology congresses in Wash-
ington, D.C., in the late fifties, pulled out a .45 loaded with
blanks, fired it into the audience, and announced to the stunned
assemblage, "I just thought you'd like to see what R2-.45 looks
like!" What no one is willing to say out loud is that this may
be one of the advanced processes being taught somewhere at
the present time.

                                                "ETHICS" VII

Scientology's theories and beliefs may be hard to take; the
processes and techniques may unwittingly reveal something
single-minded and pervasive about the direction of Scien-
tology's drive; but it is in his reaction to derision, criticism, and
attack from biased and unbiased outsiders that L. Ron Hub-
bard gives Scientology genuine dimension, an underlying
quality which invisibly cloaks the whole phenomenal move-
ment. It is Scientology's ethics which scare the hell out of me.
  Hubbard has been getting it from all sides ever since the
day he came out with Dianetics. He's not only used to it by
now, but time has convinced him that you must use criticism
and attacks to make yourself stronger. You face up to the
adversity of ridicule and outside threats by pointing straight
at them and challenging them to a sort of "anyplace, anytime"
showdown. Hubbard instinctively knew he had to make some-
thing of each and every attack, exposing it to the cold light of
Scientological reason, and use it to convince his brother Scien-
tologists that someone somewhere was *afraid* of Scientology.
There could be only one reason someone might be afraid of
Scientology: They were afraid of the truth. In the late fifties,
he wrote a pamphlet called "Why Some Fight Scientology,"
which was distributed to Scientology churches and organiza-
tions around the world. "Unfortunately," he wrote, "the person
who does not want you to study Scientology is your enemy as
well as ours. When he harangues against us to you as a 'cult,'

                                                         153

154 SCIENTOLOGY

a 'hoax,' as a very bad thing done by very bad people, he or
she is only saying, 'Please, please, please don't try to find me
out.' Thousands of such protesting people carefully investi-
gated by us have been found to have unsavory pasts and sordid
motives they did not dare (they felt) permit to come to
light...." Hubbard *never* identifies the protesters, massing
them as a great unknown you know are there because he says
they're there. It is an implied enemy, there because cold logic
will tell you, even if you're the hardest-nosed scientologist
of all, that there *must* be somebody out there against you!
  Hubbard's polemic continues. "'You had better leave Scien-
tology alone!' is an instinctive defense, prompted in all cases
investigated by a guilty conscience. Once they hear a few
truths from Scientology such people become afraid. They
know we know. And if we know this much and if you are
further informed, they feel you will find them out....Beware
the person or group who rights Scientology, for that person
fights Truth - not the truth of natural laws but the truth
about himself."
   At the same time that Hubbard was warning his minions
against outside threats, he realized that Scientology was only
as strong as its internal structure. His household security
system, developed over the years, he calls "Ethics," and de-
fines it as "reason and the contemplation of *optimum* survival."
One of the first things Ethics tackled was to develop ways
through which those individuals with unsure, vacillating, or
even dangerous attitudes about Scientology could be un-
earthed, brought to the surface, and, if possible, straightened
out, remedied, and helped. So Hubbard instituted security
checks. When he first introduced them, they became an integral
part of processing. An HCO Policy Letter of May 22, 1961,
introduced "The Only Valid Security Check." It consisted of
150 questions, some of which were:

  Have you given your right name?
  Have you ever stolen anything; forged a signature, check or

                                                "ETHICS" 155

  document; blackmailed anybody; been blackmailed; cheated;
  smuggled anything; entered a country illegally, been in prison;
  tried to act normal;* indulged in drunkenness; done any
  reckless driving; hit and run with a car; burgled any place,
  embezzled money?
    Have you ever assaulted anyone, practiced cannibalism,
  been in jail?
    Have you ever raped anyone or been raped, been involved
  in an abortion, committed adultery, bigamy, practiced homo-
  sexuality, had intercourse with a member of your family, been
  sexually unfaithful, practiced sex with animals, practiced
  sodomy slept with a member of a race of another color, com-
  mitted culpable homicide, committed a justifiable crime,
  bombed anyone, murdered anyone, hidden a body, attempted
  suicide, caused a suicide, kidnapped anyone, aided an in-
  former, betrayed anyone for money, threatened anyone with
  a firearm?
    Are my questions embarrassing?
    Do you have any bastards?
    How could you help mankind?
    What is Communism?
    Do you know of any secret plans against Scientology?
    Do you plan to steal a Scientology organization?
    Are you upset about this security check?
    What unkind thoughts have you had while doing this check?

  What is important to understand at this point is not that
Hubbard was convinced such a security check was beneficial,
but that he firmly believed there were operating forces within
Scientology which represented a specific danger. Thus, be-
cause his First Dynamic was to SURVIVE! it was only natural
he take measures to insure that survival. The disgusting ex-
tremes to which he was willing to go were made clear in May
of 1960, when he wrote a letter to Mrs. Penelope Elizabeth
Williams, wife of Scientology's director for Australia and New

* I don't know if this question is designed to make sure that nobody
escapes, or simply asks us to admit that at times, knowing we were not
quite ourselves, we nevertheless, knowingly, tried to pass ourselves off
"normal." Talk about a Catch-22!

156 SCIENTOLOGY

Zealand. In the letter, Hubbard revealed some damning dis-
coveries about his associate and apparently faithful colleague,
Jack Horner. "Horner," he wrote, "blew up in our faces and
has had his certs. cancelled. We have criminal background on
him. Rape of a girl pc in Dallas and countless others. This will
do something to (_____). Now, I firmly believe you will
be able to find a criminal background this life on (_____),
as no such occurrence anywhere in the world has failed to
find one. I'd grab him when he comes in and security check
it into view." *Everybody*, Hubbard was positive, has some-
thing to hide.
  After 1962, the security checks were no longer part of gen-
eral processing and were only used for security purposes. A
sense of necessary caution was already being felt, and a few
people began dropping out of Scientology, concerned with the
realization that somebody on the inside was actually watching
them. At the same time, whisperings began about the only
genuine palace revolt ever to shake Scientology. The extended
adventure could not have been more timely. Hubbard re-
sponded to it with all the zeal of a latter-day Torquemada.
It gave Scientology a very big plus as it struggled to expand
as a spiritual movement deserving legitimate attention and
fear because the revolt was nothing less than heresy. And
every "religion" needs it.
  It all began and developed with a man named Harry Thomp-
son. Thompson had been one of England's most successful
auditors, earning something approximating $20,000 a year,
according to Gary Watkins. He was quick to absorb what
Scientology believed and how these beliefs might be achieved,
and easily ingratiated himself with Scientology through his
genuine sincerity and expertise. Then, according to Gary, who
now teaches Thompson's system in New York, Thompson
"made a very simple discovery which aligned all the informa-
tion in Scientology, as to why it was correct when it was cor-
rect, and why it worked when it did, and why it didn't when

                                                "ETHICS" 157

it didn't." Thompson went into retreat at his home outside
London and spent three years developing and testing his dis-
covery. He named it "Amprinistics," a combination of the words
"amplify" and "principle." "What he discovered," Gary explains,
"was Natural law: Natural Law as a principle completely
manifest in all universal activity from human behavior to the
physical universe to social development." As Gary recounts the
events which led to Harry Thompson's discovery, he makes
sure he makes himself completely understood. It is almost a
technique, a small residue from his dynamic days as a Scien-
tology auditor. He stops to search for a word, and then resumes
slowly, and as he sees he is on the right track, almost picks
up speed and makes his point. His interests are now in Am-
prinistics, but he insists on a clearly defined attitude of decency
when discussing Hubbard's response to Thompson's discovery
and dissemination of Amprinistics. "I have a certain respect
for Ron Hubbard." he explains. "I think he did some marvelous
works, He's done a great job organizing a lot of information,
of arriving at common denominators available in the knowl-
edge of man. He made some tremendous advances just in the
*idea* of what kind of individual progress a person could make."
Gary is an extremely determined, fair-minded proponent of
Amprinistics. About thirty years old, of short but muscular
stature, he gives an impression of agility and physical poise.
He has blond hair and blue eyes, and as he speaks, he cannot
help but exude confidence, a confidence which almost throws
him off stride, because he seeks *reason* and *understanding*
rather than mere dynamic persuasion; he wants his listener to
appreciate that there is a balanced view to be given L. Ron
Hubbard and Harry Thompson and Amprinistics and the
whole Ethics business.
  Amprinistics was based on several basic premises: "The
first," Gary says, "was that it is possible to discover the true
nature of man and existence, that the answers are quantitative
and available; that if you have true knowledge in regard to

158 SCIENTOLOGY

one aspect of existence or a man, it is interchangeable in that
it will also be true for another man and another man and an-
other man." Thus in Amprinistics, "the highest form of being,
the highest activity, is purely knowing. The second highest -
and this is in accordance with Scientology thinking - is action.
Simply doing. Ideally, it would mean totally unhindered mo-
tion: Shooting through space without hindrances, action in its
purest form of expression. And the third point on this scale,
knowing, action, would be communicating about it." What
Harry Thompson concluded was that there was a method by
which to measure all phenomena: Identify it, handle it, and,
through techniques, improve it. He sat down and wrote a
letter about his discovery, and sent it to Scientologists every-
where. It was, according to several ex-Scientologists, "a beauti-
ful letter."
  Jack Horner was one of those who received it. This was late
in 1964, and, as he explains it, he was "getting very uptight
about the so-called Ethics." Horner had mended his several
rifts with Hubbard and apparently had never even heard of
the 1960 letter accusing him of rape in Dallas. "They," he says,
referring to Scientology, "suddenly weren't answering certain
letters. Not just mine, but certain people's. And I found that
there was a policy that anyone who simply disagreed, their
letters were called 'deadfile.' They weren't read, they just went
into the wastebasket. About that time, Harry wrote me from
England. He'd known me for about ten years. He said, 'Fly
over to see me, I think I've got something I think is very good.
And if it isn't, I'll pay your air fare.' I was so bugged by
Scientology Ethics, the suppressive persons policy, I flew over
to take a look." He saw that Thompson had organized his
thinking into two basic areas of concepts: Primaries and Sec-
ondaries. Primaries, as Gary explained it, were "factual con-
cepts that stand for real things that can be demonstrated."
Secondaries, "have as their basis negations of primaries, or
attempts to negate primaries." Thompson told Horner he had

                                                "ETHICS" 159

developed techniques which could be measured, and which
demonstrated why they succeeded when they did, and why
they were not applicable when not applicable.
  Beyond the theories, there was a more fundamental differ-
ence between Amprinistics and Scientology, at least so far as
Gary Watkins sees it. "Amprinistics," he says firmly, "believes
everyone already knows and is in action. And because we do
believe that, what we teach are improvement techniques. There
are no mysteries, no religious aura." He interrupts himself, as
if something just came to mind, and then says, all at once,
"Hubbard's got a marvelous game, because the planet is clear
now! So he says he's going to do it in ten years, you know,
as if he's responsible for it. That's *not* his job. That's something
every person lives with, himself, for himself: the degree to
which he will admit and accept awareness." Getting back to
Amprinistics, Gary says, in measured tones, "If you want to
be crass, you could call us a service. Well, that's what we call
ourselves, an educational service. We're straight out in the
open: a profit-making business. And we're not going to hide
behind titles, like religion, and so on. We pay taxes and all of
that nonsense. We're in business to make money and we have
a product. We have a product not only in terms of techniques
and methods, we also have a product in terms of apparatus
which assist in education. It's *all* strictly business."
  It was early 1965 and Ron Hubbard knew there was some-
thing dangerous brewing within his organization. He had al-
ready introduced stringent methods to deal with anyone who
represented any kind of a threat. He began to define various
crimes which might be committed against Scientology, and
labeled the types of persons who would be guilty. It was all abso-
lutely classic, producing the most time-honored dissident known
to man, the heretic. Only Scientology called him a "suppres-
sive." This was any person who actively sought to suppress or
damage Scientology or a Scientologist by *suppressive* acts,
which Hubbard incisively defined as "actions or omissions

160 SCIENTOLOGY

undertaken knowingly to suppress, reduce or impede Scien-
tology or Scientologists." Because Hubbard would certainly
not settle for any half measures, the classic concept of guilt by
association had to be introduced. This was the moment when a
fellow Scientologist found himself branded a P.T.S. "Potential
Trouble Source," clearly and cleverly defined as "any person,
while active in Scientology or a preclear, [who] remains con-
nected to a suppressive person or group."
  Once Jack Horner had examined Harry Thompson's system,
he liked what he saw, "and I wrote out a long letter saying
that I thought that what Harry had was workable." And he sent
it to Hubbard, which he now thinks might have been a mistake.
Might seems an understatement. "His response," Horner told
me, "was to declare me what is known as 'An Enemy.'" An
HCO Bulletin went out naming Horner as having been rele-
gated to the condition of "Enemy," to be considered "fair
game," defined by Hubbard as somebody who "may be de-
prived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist
without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked,
sued, or lied to, or destroyed." Anyone associated with a
"suppressed person" was immediately branded a Potential
Trouble Source. I told Horner that being named "fair game,"
or relegated to a situation of "Enemy," sounded ominous. Had
Scientology actually ever done anything to him? He hesitated,
and then said, "I know that out in California, Chuck Berner's
place - " Berner is a former Scientologist with his own move-
ment " - they were shooting it up with guns. And about a week
and a half ago I had somebody trying to kick in my back
door with a .45."
  "That's pretty wild," I said to him. "Assuming it might even
be some infuriated, misguided Scientologist, don't the police
take rather a dim view of somebody going around popping
off a .45?"
  Horner's only answer was a small chuckle, and I wasn't sure
whether he really believed some Scientologist was after him,

                                                "ETHICS" 161

or maybe enjoyed the possibility that he, or Chuck Berner in
California, represented such a clear threat to Hubbard that
it could happen.
  The only salvation for a Potential Trouble Source was to
"disconnect" - remember the "renunciations" during the Middle
Ages? - from whatever suppressive source he had been allied
to. The "disconnection" could be from an organization, a
family, or a single person, and had to be in the form of a letter,
sent via the Ethics Officers, to the person from whom the
disconnection was being made. Details of this procedure were
outlined in HCO Policy Letters issued in March of 1965, and
were followed up by HCO Policy Letters warning against As-
sist processing which ignored the need for Ethics control. In
an HCO Policy Letter of August 9, 1965, Hubbard wrote:
"Review Officer and Examiner please note, that if the person
being Reviewed for whatever reason, has reads and/or answers
on the part of the Review Form having to do with Ethics,
HE OR SHE MUST BE SENT TO ETHICS, WHETHER
THE QUESTION CLEARS OR NOT, AND WHETHER THE
REVIEW ENDS IN A FLOATING NEEDLE OR NOT. Also,
any Release of any stage who shows up in Review for an
Assist is suspect of roller-coastering, so be alert. Roller-coasters
are sent to Ethics." If a Scientologist has been away from
Scientology for any length of time, for whatever reasons, he
has to go through Review upon his return. "Roller-coastering"
was Hubbard's definition of a person who gets better and then
worse. "This occurs," he wrote, "only when he is connected to
a suppressive person or group, and he must, in order to make
his gains from Scientology permanent, either handle the source
of suppression or disconnect from it."
  Anyone sent to the Ethics Officer would have to answer some
twenty questions directly connected to that question in his
Assist or Review processing which produced the "read" found
suspicious by either the Review Officer or the Examiner. When
writer Alan J. Levy, deeply into Scientology processing as part

162 SCIENTOLOGY

of his research for an article he wrote for *Life* magazine, got a
strong "read" involving his wife's name, he found himself an-
swering a printed checklist of "potentially suppressive acts,"
which, Levy wrote, "my wife might have committed: Was she
opening or with-holding my mail? Garbling phone messages?
Listening in on phone calls? Denigrating my ambitions?"
  The general tone of Hubbard's mood in 1965 was set more
broadly by his HCO Policy Letter of August 15, 1965. It was
entitled "THINGS THAT SHOULDN'T BE," and said, quite
simply: "If you see something going on in the org that you
don't like, and yet do not wish to turn in an Ethics chit, or
indeed don't know who to report, WRITE A DESPATCH TO
THE INSPECTION OFFICER....The Inspection Officer
will then investigate it and make a report to the right ex-
ecutives or turn in an Ethics chit on the offending persons
himself." Thompson's letter was being passed around from
hand to hand, and some people were beginning to ask ques-
tions.
  In New York, an ardent young Scientologist named Jerry
Tannenbaum also received a copy of the letter. Jerry, who now
works with Monica Saxon, a former actress-dancer, teaching
something called "Dramanatomy," the drama of the body, is
of small stature, with fine features. The skin of his face is
tanned a very light walnut and looks almost stretched over his
bones. His long hair and loose-growing Vandyke beard make
him look a little like a miniature Buffalo Bill Cody. He is slim-
waisted and moves with light deliberation, suggesting someone
who had once been tense, used to be physically on the alert,
used to look quickly one way and then the other to see who
or what was coming. Now, through the system Monica has
developed over the years and which they teach together, he
has disciplined himself to relax, and breathe, and live. "The
letter was so beautifully constructed," he says, recalling
Thompson's communication. "Things at that time had been
getting a little tight in the organization, and I read it, and

                                                "ETHICS" 163

it just sounded so good; it merely stated that if what he had
found was true, then you owe it to yourself to look at it, and
if it isn't, it isn't. And Scientology had its Ethics thing, which
said that if something were considered suppressive and you
associated with it you would become 'suppressive,' but if you
wrote a letter stating that you knew you now realized you
were wrong, they'd take you back in. So I figured, well, I'll
go look anyway and if it's wrong I can always write a letter
saying I did absolute wrong. So I went and tried to present it
to some Scientologists. It was incredible, the wall that started
to build up between me and them. And it was so airtight,
there was just no....'Hey man,'" Jerry cocks his head to one
side, appealing to long-gone friends in Scientology, "'this
thing *just* says if it's true look at it, if it isn't, like, discard it.
We're all supposedly looking for the truth.'
  "Well, I had the letter, and I had shown it to some people
in Scientology, and the Ethics Officer came down and said,
'What's this, about this letter you have?' I didn't know what
to say. I said, 'I'd like you to read it.' It was really so beauti-
fully constructed. She, [the Ethics Officer] *flipped*. Words like:
'If this is true, Scientology will be forced to yield!' Well, she
gave me the ultimatum after reading the letter that either I
give this up, disconnect from that organization, or become sup-
pressive. And I said, 'Well, I have to look at it.' And I did.
Knowing that I could get back in by writing a letter."
  Jerry liked what he found in Amprinistics and for a while
he taught it. He had met Monica by this time and she allowed
him to use her apartment for his sessions. Scientology, not
content with declaring him a "suppressive," harassed him as
well. "It was known that I was teaching the course in New
York," he says. "The phone was ringing day and night. No-
body'd answer. I have the feeling that they put Monica's name
and number on a Men's Room wall because she got a lot of
terrible calls from men."
  At various periods during Scientology's history, L. Ron

164 SCIENTOLOGY

Hubbard has issued amnesties. One of them, printed in an
HCO Bulletin on his birthday, March 13, 1963, was typical.
"On my birthday," Hubbard declared regally, "and on achiev-
ing my own fourth goal in clearing, and in celebration of the
first Eight first goal Clears by 3M, I hereby extend and direct
all the organizations, officials and staff of Scientology Organiza-
tions to grant all Dianeticists and Scientologists penalized be-
fore this date a complete amnesty....Any and all offences of
any kind before this date, discovered or undiscovered, are
fully and completely forgiven. Directed at Saint Hill, on March
the thirteen, 1964, in the 13th year of Dianetics and Scien-
tology." It was not the first amnesty and has not been the last.
Jerry Tannenbaum's reaction to them is bemused. "There have
been amnesties before," he says, "and every time I'd gone in
they'd tell me I had to do the same things I'd have to do if
there wasn't an amnesty: I have to write a letter saying I'm
completely wrong for what I did. Amprinistics is suppressive
to Scientology. It's no good. It's dangerous."
  When finally organized into some form, the Ethics appeared
as a separate book, which, in a foreword, explained the pur-
pose of Ethics as being "that additional tool necessary to make
it possible to apply the technology of Scientology." The first
part of the book introduced what Hubbard called the Anti-
Social Personality, the Anti-Scientologist, among whose at-
tributes is an inability to "respond to treatment or reform or
psychotherapy." Hubbard polarized his discussion of this in-
dividual by next defining the Social Personality, and demon-
strating how this type of person was basically well disposed
towards Scientology. He then defined ten conditions, "operat-
ing states," ranging from a very top of Power to a very bottom
of Enemy. Finally, he introduced the Ethics Codes, with its
four classes of "crimes and offenses in Scientology...ER-
RORS, MISDEMEANORS, CRIMES AND HIGH CRIMES."
Errors are classed as "minor unintentional omissions or mis-
takes," and are dealt with through self-correction "reprimand

                                                "ETHICS" 165

or warning." Misdemeanors, a bit more serious, could be
either technical, general, or ethical, and, wrote Hubbard, "are
subject to direct punishment by order." Someone on staff could
find themselves demoted with their pay docked for a given
period of time.
  Crimes meant those acts "normally considered criminal,"
such as *non-compliance and neglect*. This was specifically de-
fined as obeying orders or policies which were not legal and
clearly not those promulgated by the International Board, and
indulging in "alter-is," altering "the way something actually is"
willfully.
  Any incident of a staff scientologist accepting fees on his
own was considered a *financial crime*, while a *technical crime*
was committed when someone is or is turning-into a Potential
Trouble Source and is not reported or acted upon. *General
crimes* were getting a fellow staff member into trouble by
lying. So were "heckling" and "mayhem."
  Punishment for these crimes is meted out by courts of ethics
or committees of evidence. Not directly. Guilty parties may
find themselves with suspended certificates, classifications or
awards, demotions, or may even be thrown out of Scientology.
And if the crime calls for it, the criminal can also be arrested.
  At the very top, the most serious, are the *high crimes* (*sup-
pressive acts*), which includes "Attacks on Scientology and
Scientologists, Disavowal, Splintering, Divergence, Technical
High Crimes" such as "tolerating or not insisting upon star-
rated checkouts [*Star-rated checkouts*: Technical or admin-
istrative material of highest importance checked on the person
studying it by another to make *sure* the person knows and can
apply it exactly] on all processes and their immediate tech-
nology and on relevant policy letters..." and the "CRIMINAL
ISSUE OF MATERIALS."
  Hubbard does say that "the right to petition must not be
denied," but directs that "Collective petition is a crime under
Ethics as it is an effort to hide the actual petitioner and as

166 SCIENTOLOGY

there may be no punishment for a petition, collective petition
has therefore no excuse of safety and is to be interpreted as an
effort to overwhelm and may not be regarded as a petition."
*Introduction To Scientology Ethics* ends with a brief chapter
called "Rewards and Penalties," a discussion of social histories
as assessed by Hubbard on the basis of their survival when
the citizenry was properly rewarded, and collapse when such
reward was denied. Discussing what he believes to be the
real cause of the Depression, Hubbard appears to be arguing
for a rewards system which will convince Scientologists that
his Ethics system serves only to penalize what he calls a "down
statistic" that genuine success in Scientology will always be
rewarded.
  Hubbard has allowed himself the trouble of defending the
harmless of his measures, particularly the designation of
someone having committed a High Crime as "Enemy," by
writing, "Now get this as a technical fact, not a hopeful idea:
Every time we have investigated the background of a critic
of Scientology, we have found crimes for which that person
or group could be imprisoned under existing law. We do not
find critics of Scientology who do not have criminal pasts.
Over and over we prove this. Politician A stands up on his
hind legs in a Parliament and brays for a condemnation of
Scientology. When we look him over, we find crimes, em-
bezzled funds, moral lapses, a thirst for young boys, sordid
stuff. Wife B howls at her husband for attending a Scientology
group. We look her up, and find that she had a baby he didn't
know about."
  As regards organizations such as the people in Amprinistics,
Hubbard wrote: "They are declared enemies of mankind, the
planet, and all life. They are fair game. No amnesty may ever
cover them. The Criminals Prosecution Bureau is to find any
and all crimes in their pasts, and have them brought to court
and imprisoned."
  I asked Church of Scientology Minister Bob Thomas what

                                                "ETHICS" 167

he thought of Amprinistics, and he, with characteristic sobriety
and calm, said, "Scientology took a dim view of them because
they had altered the technology and made it into a person-
alized and non-Scientological application for which they were
expelled from Scientology. If you have a *cancer*," he said with
simple directness, "you cut it out."
  "We insist," he went on to explain, his manner so incredibly
*mild* and forgiving, "on a standardized application of tech-
nology. Anyone who alters it, of course, is not practicing Scien-
tology as we have standardized it. Organization and stan-
dardization of the technology is required to have a mass
movement for freedom. There's no contradiction." As for the
people like Gary Watkins and Jack Horner who have been
expelled, Thomas says, "it isn't like excommunication. It's a
modified excommunication because they can come back in."
  Jack Horner doesn't take such a benign stand. "There are
several thousand people right here in this country who basi-
cally go along with the techniques and the processes and the
applications of Scientology and its philosophy. But they will not
or cannot, for whatever reasons, go along with the Ethics."
What I cannot reconcile in my mind is the almost burning
desire on the part of these thousands - I know they exist - to
even try to come to any kind of terms with a man and a
system which invented and developed and practiced this cruel
gestapo-like security system.
  With its policies of "suppressives" and Potential Trouble
Sources, Scientology was not only busy cutting out people
inside the organization, but was reaching out to try and choke
off any outsiders who appeared in any way dangerous. Ray
Buckingham, an English-born voice teacher and artist's repre-
sentative in New York, first learned about Scientology when
one of his students, a girl named Mary Vonnie, went to Scien-
tology for help. According to Buckingham's testimony at the
Scientology tax hearings in Washington, D.C., Miss Vonnie
had some serious personal problems when she first came to

168 SCIENTOLOGY

study with him. Scientology appeared to help her and she in-
volved herself seriously and after six months of training in
Washington, D.C., became a full-fledged auditor. She discussed
Scientology with Buckingham, who expressed more than casual
interest. He bought several of the books and eventually took
some processing from her, in exchange for voice lessons. All
this stopped when he discovered that some of the information
he had told her was being passed on to the Founding Church
in New York. Buckingham felt this to be clearly unethical, and
said so. He had, in the meantime, urged several of his other
pupils to try Scientology. Shortly after he was no longer being
audited, he began to hear some rather strange reports about
himself, including one from a talented young musical comedy
singer and dancer, Julie Migines, who told him one day, as he
related at the hearings, "'I was audited today and I just learned
that you killed me in the last fifteen lives.'"
  At the same time that all this began to happen, Bucking-
ham's fiancee was becoming deeply involved with Scientology
and was being slowly estranged from him by, as he described
him, one of Scientology's "doctors of divinity." His fiancee was
made to disconnect from him and told him he would die
shortly because he was a Potential Trouble Source. When
Buckingham finally went to the offices of The Founding
Church of Scientology and spoke with one of the Ethics Of-
ficers, he was told that his problems stemmed from his asso-
ciation with a man named Carl Eugster, a colleague, and a
collaborator with Buckingham in a business venture, who was
a "suppressive." Only disconnection from Eugster could allow
Buckingham to clear up his personal affairs. When he de-
manded to know why Eugster had been declared "suppres-
sive," he was told that it was all because Eugster, in turn, had
been associated with someone who was a "suppressive."
  In 1966, Ray Buckingham went on a local New York radio
program and discussed what had happened to him. Scientology
immediately issued an official declaration of suppression. In

                                                "ETHICS" 169

an HCO Ethics Order dated November 22, 1966, he was ac-
cused of public disavowal of Scientology, threatening to attack
Scientology in Civil Court, causing disconnections and concern
to former pupils, refusing to disconnect from Carl Eugster,
and "DECLARED also in the same radio program - that a
'True Philosophy' would not charge for its service - thus deny-
ing any 'True Philosophy' the right to survive in the physical
universe." Buckingham was not to be communicated with by
any Scientologists, was never to be trained or processed, and
was declared "fair game." "PERSONS CONNECTED with
him are hereby Declared POTENTIAL TROUBLE SOURCES
and are not to be trained or processed until they HANDLE
OR DISCONNECT: or themselves be Declared SUPPRES-
SIVE if they refuse or do not accomplish it within a period
of three weeks from this date." The order was signed on behalf
of L. Ron Hubbard by the New York Ethics Officer.
  At much the same time, Carl Eugster, Buckingham's sup-
posed "suppressive" connection, found his wife and son de-
clared Suppressives because of their refusal to disconnect from
him.
  As a result of the Suppressive Order against him, several
of Buckingham's clients disconnected from him, each writing
a letter which was approved, and in some cases initialed, by
the Ethics Officer before being sent. "It may interest you to
know," Mary Vonnie wrote in her letter, "that the effects you
have caused have not and could not ever injure Scientology
and the achievement of its purposes, but if one or two people,
not quite objective enough to see what's in front of them,
should become blinded by the bank you restimulate on them,
then one or two people have been delayed on the road to
Total Freedom. This is the greatest effect you can cause.
Heavy restimulation of a few people who also feel that they
must be punished." The letter closed with a decisive "That's
it!" and her signature. Another, not quite as direct, began on
a note of sadly accepted sorrow: "I had hoped that during

170 SCIENTOLOGY

[the] three week period after you, made yourself a suppressive
towards Scientology, that I would be influential enough to get
you to take steps to change that condition." Reconciling to
a failure to achieve this, the letter writer went on to express
admiration for Buckingham's teaching abilities, adding "It
seems to me that this is the only area in which you do not
commit overts and that's why this area is so prosperous for
you." The letter closes with a last energetic plea. "Gosh, Ray,
I don't have to tell you a thing. If you could only hold off your
Bank while thinking about this Ethics bit, you would see that
Ethics is right." The letter was signed, "Sincerely."
  The shortest disconnect letter I have seen came right to
the point and was unavoidably poignant. "Dear Ann," it read,
"I hereby disconnect from you. Love, Barbara."
  It is hard to absorb exactly what Scientology Ethics has
in mind when it orders that "suppressives," or those designated
as "Enemy," should be punished, or that they can liberate
themselves from their condition by punishing the agent of
their suppression. Jerry Tannenbaum called up the Church of
Scientology one day not too long ago to talk to an old friend.
"I called up," he says, "to get a receipt for some land I bought
from him. I gave my professional name, otherwise I wouldn't
have gotten through. And I said, 'Hi, Milt. This is Jerry. I'd
like to get - ' And he just cut me off and said: 'The terminal
you want is Ethics.' I said, 'Milt, I just want to - ' 'The terminal
you want is Ethics!' Then Ethics - it was crazy - this girl, a
young girl, and *she* was taking care of Scientology Ethics. She
said, 'Are you still in Amprinistics?' I said, 'Listen, I was out
of Amprinistics about two and a half years ago. There isn't
even an organization here, except what Gary started, and this
was before he started it. I don't communicate with the guy or
anything.' And she said, 'Well, it still exists and until it no
longer exists on this planet, until you do something about
it....' I said, 'Huh?' And she said something about I should

                                                "ETHICS" 171

help 'kill it.' I thought, Whew! that's a *beautiful* way to talk
over the phone."
  Because of increased public attention and more and more
criticism regarding the Ethics policies, Scientology has found
it necessary to make what it feels are important public ac-
commodations. In the Public Notices of *The New York Times*
in November of 1968 the following announcement appeared:
"The Church of Scientology wishes to make known that the
policy known as disconnection is now ended. One individual
no longer needs to separate from another. A policy dated
November 13, 1968 states 'since we can now handle all types of
cases, disconnection as a condition is cancelled.'" Early in
January, English Scientologists delivered six boxes of unused
security checks to the Department of Health and Social Ser-
vices as a dramatic gesture to show that the checks were no
longer in use. A representative of Scientology, David Gaiman,
was quoted as saying: "We have made a very honest and
expensive attempt to find out what we were doing that was
unacceptable by the community, and we have brought out a
code of reform." Later that month, the following was circulated
in Scientology's various magazines and newsletters:

    AS THE RESULT OF ANSWERS TO A QUESTIONNAIRE
  CIRCULATED WIDELY IN VARIOUS PARTS OF THE
  WORLD, THE CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY HAS
  EVOLVED THE FOLLOWING CODE OF REFORM TO
  BRING ITS POLICIES MORE IN LINE WITH THE
  NEEDS OF THE PUBLIC:

  1. Cancellation of disconnection as a relief to those suffering
     from familial suppression.
  2. Cancellation of security checks as a form of confession.
  3. Prohibition of any confessional materials being written
     down.
  4. Cancellation of declaring people Fair Game.

  As much out of curiosity as anything else, Jerry Tannenbaum
heard about these latest changes and immediately went down
to The Founding Church of Scientology. He spoke to the

172 SCIENTOLOGY

Ethics Officer, wanting to know how one now went about
getting reinstated. The Ethics Officer gave him a copy of the
HCO Policy Letter of 6 October, 1967. It was a printed defini-
tion of the "Condition of Liability." the "Condition of Treason,
The Condition of Doubt, and the Condition of Enemy." Under
Liability, one of the requirements was to "deliver an effective
blow to the enemies of the group one has been pretending to
be part of despite personal danger." Under Treason, one of
the conditions was to "Perform a self-damaging act that fur-
thers the purposes or objectives of the group one has betrayed
[Scientology]." Under the Condition of Enemy, the formulas
had been crossed out and a single one inserted: "Find out
*who* you really are."
  As Jerry said, "I told the guy, 'hasn't there been an Amnesty?'
and the guy said, 'Here's what you have to do.'" Jerry smiled,
still mildly surprised by his own personal sense of amusement
at the brief confrontation, and added, "It hasn't changed at
all."


                                                       THREE


                                            CONCLUSIONS VIII

Early in this book I wrote that I prefer complexity in man;
a search for simplistic formulae not only offends me, but
frightens me. I have to add that I loathe anything which preys
upon human weaknesses. I know you can broaden this state-
ment so that it includes every organized movement of faith
ever known to man, but Scientology has been so shameless,
so blatantly vulgar and, yes, commercial, in telling its ad-
herents all about The Truth and how to achieve it, that it has
made a unique place for itself in our times. The facts speak
for themselves eloquently.

                             I

Somewhere in all the millions of words written and spoken
about Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard manages to tell us exactly
what Scientology's intentions and goals are and how it plans
to achieve them. The various processes and drills may be
hidden from casual outside view because of Scientology's ultra-
strict code of internal ethics, but the entire phenomenon of
this mass movement was never more clearly and honestly de-
fined than when Church of Scientology Minister Bob Thomas
told me that Scientology strives to help a person *control* his
memories. While this may go far in explaining the processes
and drills, it throws little light on some of Scientology's more
fanciful theories and beliefs, and does little to explain *why*

                                                         175

176 SCIENTOLOGY

so many people are getting into it. Some clue to the latter may
lie in the types of persons drawn to Scientology.
  Jack Horner put it this way, when he said, about himself and
the majority of those who involved themselves with Scientology
in the early days: "Most of us were reasonably pragmatic,
heuristic, if you will. It was a question of does this bring
about beneficial changes in people, and if so, good." Horner
added, quite candidly, "We weren't in Scientology for games -
we *were* in a way - but the point is that we were quite serious
about it. For a lot of us in Scientology, while it might have had
parts of it that weren't right, it was the only game in town."
  Jerry Tannenbaum's view is broader, and gentler. "There are
so many ways I have looked at Scientology," he told me, "in
terms of its existence at this time; whether its existence is in
actual fact good or bad. And when I view it that way, I couldn't
say it's either good or bad. I could say, based on studies of
other philosophies, Eastern philosophies, that a person is at-
tracted to it if that's his Karma; if it's his Karma to be stuck
in it and to be mentally hurt. That was the design, it's already
in the cards for him to have that experience. When you talk
about it in terms of Western philosophies, and psychology, it's
very destructive. It makes an automaton out of a person. It
robs that person of his own individuality. But these expressions
are Western philosophy expressions."
  Looking back on his own life, Jerry, who now embraces the
tenets of Tibetan Buddhism, said, "I was naive, because I
hadn't studied anything else. I studied sociology and psy-
chology at college, then went to the Summerhill movement. I
dropped out of college. I was...like that educational thing
bothered me very much. There was not much that could be
accomplished there in a short period of time. And I was en-
ergetic in that sense. After Summerhill I heard about Scien-
tology and I met some people that were in it. They told me
about it and it sounded great. It was the first time I heard
of past life and actually studying it, so I was taken right in,

                                             CONCLUSIONS 177

and I really went in hook, line and sinker, and I was very,
very dedicated - that's a horrible word, *dedicated*, 'cause it
starts with *ded* - and I was a great Scientologist. I had a lot of
very warm friendships. There's one thing about the people all
working together like that, as Hesse said in one book, *Demian*,
when he saw all the soldiers going towards the front: he said
there was something magnificent about the movement, their
desire to move, to get the enemy. The shame is that they're
so willing to die for a cause, instead of living for one. So the
people in Scientology were like that, giving of themselves with
tremendous energy for what they believe was good, which...
it's a beautiful feeling." He paused for a moment, obviously
remembering how it had all come to an end. "It was a little
shocking when I left," he said with understatement. "All these
friendships were just, Bluuunkk!" and he wiped his hand
through the air as if erasing something with one broad stroke.
  When I asked Gary Watkins what he thought the biggest
thing wrong with Scientology was, he sat back to think, then
hunched forward, rested his elbows on his desk, clenched his
hands, and then laughed, to himself, and thought some more.
It was a long time before he spoke. "The basic objective of the
entire field is based upon the premise of clear, that people
are unenlightened. The thing with Scientology is you first have
to convince a man that he's not clear, and then tell him you'll
clear him." Why, I wondered, was it made to look so com-
plicated and inaccessible? Because, Gary said, "Ron Hubbard's
understanding of problems people have, and his general un-
derstanding, is in terms of extraordinary phenomena. The
books and the charts, they tend to complicate matters rather
than simplify them. He didn't give enough credit to people:
where they were, and what they do know and what they are
accomplishing. It's a convincing story, it's really a convincing
story. I would say, maybe, if Ron Hubbard hadn't gone through
all this, somebody else might've had to, eventually, to go
through all the complications. He made discoveries that were

178 CONCLUSIONS

well in advance of discoveries made in psychology and psy-
chiatry, of aspects of mind, aspects of behavior, that eventu-
ally somebody would have come around to. The business of
psychosomatic ailments being 70 percent of all ailments; a
little bolder than anyone else, but psychologists and psy-
chiatrists *admit* such phenomena." But there was always a
personal quality to Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard's presence,
and wrath, and it gives a cautiously realistic tone to what
Gary says next. "Every time anybody got very close to it
[Total Freedom], he stopped them. Every time anyone created
successful promotion, he kicked them out, pulled them out of
a post. Every time anyone started to gather a reasonable fol-
lowing, he shipped them out, or changed their function."
  Putting all this together rang a small bell, something Jack
Horner had said which I felt was on a lot of people's minds.
"If I thought," he had said, "there was any way of working
with Ron, I would, but I don't see any way of doing it." This
one thought, common to so many ex-Scientologists, nagging
them as they discuss their personal experiences and wonder
about the philosophy and the man who made it all happen:
What if he is right? What if, despite those personal qualities of
Hubbard's which are dubious, despite that shattering moment
when Scientology turned on them savagely and threw them
out, despite their own analyses which reveal disparities and
loopholes: what if L. Ron Hubbard really grabbed something
big and worked out a system which does give you all the
powers he identified, and what if his is the first and only
system which can do it? It is frankly a terrifying thought.
  But if it is right, and if that door to Total Freedom is
exactly where Hubbard said man will find it, why all the fancy
lingo, an the almost intentional intricacy of the gradients,
as if it is more important to keep climbing up that ladder than
reaching the top; as if L. Ron Hubbard - and it a suggestion
which crossed my mind often as I talked and read and won-
dered about Scientology - himself doesn't know where he is

                                             CONCLUSIONS 179

going. That what is important is just to keep it all *going*.
Somewhere.
  Bob Thomas, who is now head of the Hubbard organization
in Los Angeles, and has become probably the most important
Scientologist in the United States, explains this seeming con-
tradiction calmly. "As the research advances the technology
changes at the advanced level. It doesn't confuse, because the
lower levels are not changed very radically by any of the
new researches. It's like every stage of development that's
reached, the next stage is researched and then put out." Doesn't
that, I asked him, make processing eternal or endless? "If
processing is eternal," he answered, "it's only because the
degree of rehabilitation of the human being, from our point
of view, is eternal. But there are finite states of attainment,
approaching this infinitude. We have no limitations, we project
no limitations as to how powerful and advanced a state of
consciousness man can attain." What I really felt, I said, was
that Scientology seemed enveloping, always there, to be lived
with every moment of every day. Thomas disagreed. "Let's
face it," he said with candor. "Everyone has a philosophy of
life, whether they have articulated it or not. It's with them, in
terms of the structure of their viewpoint. How they would
verbalize it varies, but they all have, basically, some assump-
tions about life which are with them always." When I sug-
gested that it all seemed as if man might never be free,
totally, because he would always have to depend upon Scien-
tology to show him The Way, Thomas said, "Freedom is a
relative term. One of the basic Scientology viewpoints is that
absolutes are not attainable in the physical universe. But you
can get more and more and more free, and that's what's hap-
pening in Scientology: people are finding out more and more
about themselves and the more they find out about themselves,
the freer they are. We envision no ultimate limitation on how
free an individual can be. The researches that Mr. Hubbard

180 CONCLUSIONS

is doing are designed to carry man forward toward that ul-
timate goal of Total Freedom."
  More than one person has wondered about these current
researches of Hubbard's, and his research techniques in gen-
eral. During its investigation into Scientology, the Board of
Inquiry in the state of Victoria, in Australia, heard one witness
testify: "We never saw Ron actually engaged in research...
because, as I understand, a lot of research was done in the
early hours of the morning, but...the fact that the course
was going, [that] was also part of the research program, as
he would observe students and see what they were doing,
and then, in his own time, what was going wrong and cor-
rect it...."
  Another witness stated that "sometimes Ron would say if he
wanted to do research on a certain process and there was at
one time a number of students selected to run this process,
but the majority of research he gets Mary Sue to run. So
whatever he worked out, Mary Sue runs on him before he
uses it."
  Nick Robinson, the young Englishman who had spent
enough time on board Hubbard's flagship to observe the man
at work, said, "The way Hubbard did his research, so far as
we could see, was to scout around the islands and the coast-
line of the Mediterranean and see what it suggested to him,
you see. He was supposed to have total recall of past lives..."
and "one incident which he described at the party following
his return was that he had docked at Sardinia, and two thou-
sand years ago, according to him, he had been the commander
of a fleet of war galleys in the Mediterranean, and he had had
an affair with the priestess of the Temple of Sardinia, and he
used to make assignations with her by her secret tunnel into
the temple - it was all beautiful Rider Haggard stuff. Well, at
the island he made a little plasticene model of the secret en-
trance and sent his troops around to scout around for it.
And there it was, lo and behold! It was a stone which resem-

                                             CONCLUSIONS 181

bled the model. They thought this was the entrance. And when
Hubbard described this at the party celebrating his return - "
arriving at this exact spot two thousand years after the fact
to find a large stone he had duplicated in clay, "the whole
room sort of erupted into crys of 'Good Old Ron!' and whistles.
I think I was the only one there who thought, 'Well, this is
marvelous showmanship, but it doesn't prove a damn thing
about past lives.'"
  Monica Saxon, who developed the techniques of Dramanat-
omy which Jerry Tannenbaum teaches with her, looks back on
Scientology with an insight which preceded her involvement.
"I didn't go into Scientology to become an auditor," she says.
"It looked interesting, and I went in to look at it. I was in
classes where people audited each other, and with private
auditors, and I reached clear - what they were calling clear
then." There is a controlled serenity about Monica which
comes through in her well-modulated voice; there is an un-
willingness to laugh easily, yet a smile, when it comes, is warm
and sincere. She has an oval, high-cheeked face, and eyes that
are wide and soft. Her hair is long and falls down her back,
and when she moves, you can see her full stature and the
ease with which she gestures or takes a step. It is almost a
dancer's body, implying great strength and control. Her eyes
watch and listen and she answers directly, with objective self-
knowledge. Her disenchantment with Scientology began at a
congress in Washington, D.C. "The whole presentation," she
explains, "was like a snake medicine show. He [Hubbard]
even had a drummer, who would drum - " she rises and takes
a determined pose, her right arm raised above an imaginary
drum, " - as he was walking around, to make a point in his
speech." She strides across the floor, her step purposeful, ma-
jestic. Then she becomes the drummer and lifts her arm, and
then drops it. "Boom! and he would go into his point." She
stops and turns to look at me. "Like indoctrination. Brain-
washing. You know who he reminded me of? He looked like a

182 CONCLUSIONS

cross between Wallace Beery and W.C. Fields; W.C. Fields
in those movies being a snake-oil salesman. Even his delivery
was of that nature. And I'd been in show business for years
before I did this work, and I looked, and I thought, Wow!
this is a Big Show. I met him personally during the Congress,
and he was playing the Great God. Just the way he'd say,
'How do you do - '" Monica's look grows almost somber, min-
isterial, her hand-clasp solid and cool. "He was presenting
himself to be worshipped, really."
  Yet some of the processes in Scientology genuinely appealed
to her. "To look at Changes," she says. "If I was the auditor and
you were the preclear, I'd say: 'Get the idea of changing.' And
then you'd say something back to me, or just, 'Yes, I got the
idea.' And then I'd say 'Get the idea of not changing.' And
then you'd look at that and either say your idea of not chang-
ing or else just say, 'Okay, I got the idea.' This would be
repeated for one hour. And then at the end of the hour we'd
change and you'd become the auditor and I'd be the preclear
and you'd give it to me. I found that was very creative; I
looked at my own mind, how my own mind worked with the
idea of changing or not changing, and that, to me, was what
I was doing with that process. I don't know if anyone else
was doing that with it."
  Her criticism of Scientology is very simple. "What I really
feel is that the whole technique - what he uses as technique - is
training people how to indoctrinate other people. There's that
certain point that you reach when you have to go through
training to be an auditor to go beyond that. Actually, what
happens with the training, what I saw, it's pretty strong: you
get indoctrinated and pretty soon you - I watched the people,
what they were doing before just slips away. And suddenly
they're all *auditors*. It's drummed at you and drummed at you,
and the memorization, what they call 'duplicating the data,'
the memorization is strong so that there's no room - it pushes -
it's like taking something and pushing it into a person at such

                                             CONCLUSIONS 183

speed that anything that they had before is pushed right out.
You come out as a scientologist."
  Monica left it all in 1962. "When I was doing these processes,"
she says, "there wasn't any Grading going on with those
particular types of processes. When they began to Grade, that's
when I left. Because I felt, I am the judge of whether I got
out of *that* what I wanted, and for someone else to say that
they have a test that's going to tell me whether I got what *I*
wanted out of it, well," she gives a small throaty laugh, "I don't
consider that valid. Also, if you've come to a point where you
feel in command of your own life, you don't need a test. I
feel that a test is on a need basis, really. It's an ego basis. I
didn't want that. If you need verification, then you're not really
there. There are many philosophies where you reach a 'clear'
point, but that's *your* 'clear' point. Nobody can test you on it.
It's a personal concept. The clear that they mean is one that
would make you available for Scientology. I saw that an at-
tempt was being made not to let you have that state of clear.
That they were going to use the notion, but were not going
to allow it. And that's when I left."
  Jerry has been listening, and now says: "I don't doubt that
Hubbard - who I think is very impressive, a very good show-
man, very aware of many subjects, well-versed on many sub-
jects - knows how to talk - working with a person could do
great things. But when *he* does those great things and then
writes a bulletin and says 'Everybody do this now with your
preclears....'" He gives a small shake of his head. "There
are so many *human* situations going. Like all a guy can think
about is screwing his auditor; many ego things going on. Like
people being auditors, and that leading to a great deal of ego.
There's a tremendous amount of unconscious activity going
on down there and he just sends out a bulletin expecting the
same results he gets. That's ludicrous. It's ludicrous for a
person to think that he can start an *organization of teachers*
like that and achieve the results he's achieving. In the Eastern

184 CONCLUSIONS

sense, if he had brought one person to full enlightenment, it
would have been much greater, than a thousand people to
someplace lower." It is as if Hubbard no longer thinks of his
followers as being plain old mortals. Says Jerry, "I remember
a couple of guys who wanted to go into Reichian Therapy,
and they talked about: 'Gee, it's great, you get these chicks
in - you know, you work with people in the nude and you
touch bodies....' It's like here you can go in and become an
auditor in very short order. A tremendous amount of pretense."
He shakes his head again and then smiles. "I feel like James
Coburn, in 'Flint,' when he goes up to the girl and says: 'You
are not a something-something-Pleasure Machine.' That's how
I feel with any scientologist: You are not a Hubbard Scien-
tology computing machine."

                             II

Is Scientology brainwashing? Has L. Ron Hubbard actually
developed a set of techniques which empty you of everything
you are - your "self," however flawed - to be replaced with
Scientology data: *theta*, Ability, MEST, Power, Past Lives, and
all the rest of it? If, as Hubbard believed from the first mo-
ment he introduced Dianetics, the brain is a perfect computer,
why can it not follow that he knows how to clean out that com-
puter and reprogram it properly? You will probably argue
that if Scientology is brainwashing, so is religious liturgy, and
so is going to school, and so is...*anything* we learn. We
think of brainwashing as being performed under duress, but
Scientology involves genuine faith on the part of its partici-
pants. Can the label still apply?
  The process of brainwashing, as defined in the *Encyclopae-
dia Britannica*, is "Controlling physical and social environment
to destroy loyalties to any non-Communist - " the definition is
given in terms of Chinese Communist methods " - groups or
individuals, to demonstrate to the individual that his attitudes

                                             CONCLUSIONS 185

and patterns of thinking are incorrect and must be changed,
and to develop loyalty and unquestioning obedience....The
process involves the removal of social and perceptual sup-
ports; the weakening of the ego by physical pressures, the
coercion of guilt-provoking behavior that then requires ra-
tionalization; the destruction of the person's self-image by
humiliation and revilement; the rebuilding of this self-image
through the positive personal relationships that develop in the
enforced intimacy of the cell despite the ever-present atmo-
sphere of hostility; a shift of perceptual and semantic frames
of reference resulting from the desire to identify with the
point of view of the cellmates and the need to rationalize
coerced behavior; and the elaboration of this new frame of
reference through the intensive group study programs. The
depth and permanence of these changes in attitude and point
of view depend on the personality of the individual, his degree
of motivation to be reformed and the degree to which the
environment continues to coerce his behavior and support his
new frame of reference."
  Whatever physical and psychological cruelties this descrip-
tion implies as being inherent to successful brainwashing are
missing, and, more important, unnecessary in Scientology for
one simple reason: Scientologists *want* to be in Scientology
because it works. It works because, quite simply, it is volun-
tary self-induced brainwashing. And because it does work, so
many young people who have grown disillusioned with social
structures which do not work at all, who refuse to accept the
notion that life is an impossible struggle which cannot be
made absolutely *simple*, find some kind of solace and welcome
within a totally forgiving system which promises spiritual
eternity, identifies and locates all guilt, and then - *mirabile
dictu*! - makes it all go away, and replaces it with something
glowing and sure. Scientology, whether you want to call it
brainwashing or not, works because when all is said and
done, the people in it do it to themselves.

186 CONCLUSIONS

  Scientology's astonishing and continuing success is being
additionally reinforced by a pervasive sense of togetherness
which emanates from everything Scientologists do. I felt it
at the Scientology Congress I attended at the Hotel Martinique
and saw it in the steady stream of "successes" which pop up
all over the place. It was never more evident than in the
sense of beatific frenzy which welcomed the pre-Christmas
appearance of John McMasters. All of these things work to
give enormous strength to the belief that Scientology works.
  What is even more impressive is the ease and speed with
which people are smoothly made a part of the movement. Bud
Lee, the young free-lance photographer who told me what
happened during the first two sessions of the Communications
Course, went into great detail about what it felt like when he
first walked in. I think that both subjectively and objectively
it gives a very revealing picture of what it is that helps make
Scientology work.
  "I went over on a Monday, and when I first came in, all I
saw were all these happy people around - good-looking girls
wearing these abbreviated costumes. One had on a little tiny
brown miniskirt with a peekaboo see-through blouse, and she
looked like something out of *Playboy*, but more earthy. There
was this young guy on a couch, a very good-looking young
guy, probably about twenty or twenty-one, and I don't know
how many good-looking girls he had around: these girls were
coming over, and they'd sit on his lap, and one girl, a big girl,
a blonde, she came over and sat on his lap and started kissing
him, and kissing his ears, and then she got up and left and a
little while later *another* girl came over. I'd literally just come
in off the street, I didn't know anything about Scientology at
this point, other than a very small briefing [from someone at
*Life* magazine]. It looked like one wild orgy. And the com-
mon expression, every time you say something, they say, 'Oh,
*beautiful, beautiful*.' They're always saying, '*beauti[ul*,' with
sort of a smile that's not a big smile, but sort of a benign

                                             CONCLUSIONS 187

smile. And these eyes that are not here nor there. They're like
beautiful zombies, wandering around. So I was really en-
chanted by this whole atmosphere. Like I said, 'My God, if
this is Hell...Wow! This is great! This is fantastic!' At *least*
sixteen girls l saw that afternoon were really beautiful, really
gorgeous! And I signed up for the $750 course, and I gave
them a $50 down payment. And one girl came over to me and
she sat down next to me and she said, real breathless, 'Hi, what's
your name?' So I said, 'My name is Bud.' And she was really
a gorgeous-looking girl, with long brunette hair, big hazel
eyes, and very, very creamy white skin, and huge, soft breasts,
and she just sat right next to me and began sorting out papers
or something. And then she got up and said, 'Bye...' still
breathy like that. 'I'll see you later.'"
  From the first moments of confrontation in the Communica-
tions Course, Bud was taken by the whole thing. "At this
point," he says, "I was still believing, I was sort of absorbing
all this, and there were all these lonely people in the room:
like there was a woman without a chin, and there was another
girl who looked very kind of masculine, an uptight girl who
had a leather outfit on. She was sweating. She didn't have any
makeup. And there were all these kind of weird-looking
people. And in addition to the weird-looking people there were
some beautiful people, some really good-looking girls."
  The next night, during the first break in Bull-Baiting, "this
girl came in, Nina Jones, who looked like she just came out of
*Glamour* magazine. She was wearing sort of a little Indian
short minidress, and a band in her hair, and tight little curls,
and necklaces, very cute looking, kind of peppy. And the
moment she came into the room I knew she was in there for
my benefit, because there was no other reason for her to be in
that room. And she came over to me and said, 'Would you
please come to my office? I'd like to talk to you.' She was very
polite, you know, like they always are, with a sort of slight
smile, and she said to me, 'Did you take any pictures?' And I

188 CONCLUSIONS

said, 'Yes.' And I told her it was for a magazine. I don't
remember all of it, but one question sticks in my mind, she
kept repeating it over and over again - the same thing like we
were having in Bull-Baiting: 'What were you doing on the
third floor? What were you doing on the third floor? What
were you doing on the third floor? What were you doing on
the third floor?' Like that, over again and over again and over
again. And doing it without showing anger, or anything, just
over again and over again and over again. And I said, 'I
wasn't *on* the third floor.' I said, 'Or if I *was* on the third floor,
I didn't know I was on the third floor.' And then I suddenly
remembered, and I said, 'Oh, yes, I remember yesterday, there
was a monitor who took me up to get some tickets for a class
on Saturday or something, and we went up to an upper level,
and I thought it was the second floor,' and I said to her, 'Isn't
this the first floor?' And she kind of looked at me, very
suspiciously, with the same face though, and said, 'Who were
you talking to on the third floor? Who were you talking to
on the third floor? Who were you talking to on the third floor?'
And I explained to her that I hadn't talked to anyone. Then
I remembered that I had bumped into somebody I had met
in Key West last January, a sculptor I had met down there.
He was in this hallway and they had these rows of chairs and
they were stuffing envelopes. They were all like these zombies
with these slight smiles, sort of, you know, looking up. They
were all stuffing envelopes, stuffing envelopes. And he got up
and practically kissed me. He threw his arms around me, and
he said, 'Oh, man! You're beautiful!' He's one of these really
hip people, with big moustaches and the mod clothes...he's
in his forties, but he acts like he's fifteen. He's the type of
guy who says, 'How's your ass?' and all that sort of thing.
And I said to him, 'When're you going to be leaving?' So we
went out and had coffee. Anyway, that's the person I talked
to. He's perfectly innocent, he didn't know I was coming.
I didn't know he'd be there or anything. But Nina was con-

                                             CONCLUSIONS 189

vinced that I had been on the third floor and I had taken
pictures of something on the third floor that I shouldn't have.
I have no idea what's on the third floor other than the hall
with the envelope stuffers. I know there's something in those
rooms, but I didn't get to see the rooms, because there's a
desk, with a girl behind it - same kind of smile - that separates
you, and beyond her, who knows what goes on. If I was crazy,
I'd suddenly imagine it's because they do it in the nude or
something. But I really don't know what they do.
  "So Nina examined me further, and then she mentioned
Yvonne Chabrier, who is the reporter from *Life*, the researcher,
she mentioned her name, and asked, 'Do you know Yvonne
Chabrier? Do you know Yvonne Chabrier?...Yvonne
Chabrier?' And I said, 'Yes, I do.' I didn't want to lie; I felt
very *funny* lying. And she said, 'How do you know her?' and
I said, 'Well, I originally came over here for *Life*, but they've
already closed the story.' And then she *really* got uptight, and
she walked out of the room, and said, 'I want you to come
with me and meet this other guy,' I forget his name, Owen,
or something, and he was in one of these little cubicles. And
he sat down and he was much nicer. He did the same thing of
cross-examining me, but he was more interested in what *Life*
was doing. I explained to him that I didn't know what *Life*
was up to, which I really didn't, because they had briefed me
very little."
  When it was all over, Bud not only apologized for what he
had done, but turned over all of his film, exposed and unused.
"I explained to them that I really *believe* in this stuff and that
I thought they were doing a lot of good for a lot of people that
had nothing else. That I would like to come back sometime,
in the future, and take it up seriously. And they said, 'Maybe.
in the future.' He, the guy, explained to me that I couldn't
stay simply because I hadn't come of my own accord. They
only are interested in people who come on their own; even if
your *brother* sent you, he said, 'We won't take you. You come

190 CONCLUSIONS

because *you* want to come.' So, Nina gave me my fifty-dollar
deposit back, and I went back and got my coat in the room,
and I thanked the teacher, Bobbie, and I spent too long talking
to her, because Nina came in and she was very uptight about
me talking to Bobbie, and Bobbie was confused. I said, 'Thank
you very much, I hope to meet you again in the future.' And
Nina kind of looked at her, and then looked at me, and I said
to Bobbie, sort of, like, 'Nothing to worry about.' And then
I put my coat on, and went home."
  Bud pauses in his narrative and looks back on the whole
experience, and then says, slowly, "I really did believe. I
believed right until the moment they came and took me out
of the class. I was like one of those lonely souls, I felt just like
the other people in the class...." He tries to laugh, but it goes
dry. "There are really beautiful people in this, and I was
really upset when they asked me to leave. I really was. I was
more upset than they were. Because I wanted to find out, like
I'm *dying* to find out what happens in the Fourth or Sixth
Class. I wanted to see what they *did*. They really fed me the
bait, and I bit!" He starts to laugh again, but instead stops
and says, wistfully, "The girl who gave the first lecture, Bobble,
was beautiful. She sat on the edge of this desk, and crossed
these long legs of hers, and these big eyes, and she was very
soft-spoken, and she said, 'Now is there *anything* you don't
understand?'"
  A few weeks later, Bud received a letter from the Church
of Scientology which began "Dear Bud," and expressed some-
thing akin to sorrow that he had asked for his money back. It
went on to express the hope that he would return, that what-
ever had happened could be worked out and forgotten. When
we last talked, Bud was seriously considering returning so
that he could find out, finally, what does happen in the Fourth
or Sixth Class.
  Yes, Scientology may be a form of voluntary brainwashing,
but conversely, we, as social animals, seem to *need* phenomena

                                             CONCLUSIONS 191

such as Scientology. Rollo May, the well-known psycho-
therapist, discussed this question when he reviewed Dr.
Winter's book, *A Doctor Looks At Dianetics*, in 1951. May
suggested that there is something in us which is satisfied by a
psycho-sociological movement which, as he put it, is a "con-
fusion of fantasy with scientific claims. Apparently," he wrote,
"modern people reach out on the one hand for scientific
authority and on the other hand they seek some realm of
fantasy in which their irrational tendencies can temporarily
have full play." Speaking then as a behavioral scientist, May
concludes: "Does this imply that modern man is not only
anxious, demanding security, but also suffers in our com-
mercial and industrial society from a suppression of fantasy
life and imagination, and thus seizes upon the new forms of
magic?" Nineteen years after that was written, with life
accelerated to an almost maniac pitch, and a burgeoning in-
terest in all forms of the occult as offering us some kind of an
*answer*, man is looking to the seemingly irrational to explain
the irrationality of modern times. The answer to May's ques-
tion is Yes. If it were otherwise, Scientology would be unheard
of and, though Hubbard would be the last to admit, unneces-
sary.

                            III

Scientology inures itself against outside criticism by insisting
that anything written or said against it must be judged rela-
tively, viewed against the equally "relative" merits of other
forms of psychotherapy and spiritual activity, and be seen in
a "proper" context. When *Life* magazine published the long
article on Scientology in 1968, L. Ron Hubbard wrote the
magazine a letter in which he said: "Those attacking Scien-
tology run mental institutions. They make millions out of it.
They advocate brutal, murderous actions against the insane.
They are terrified of losing the avalanches of money gouged
out of governments. They see Scientology taking it all away

192 CONCLUSIONS

with kind, effective measures. There is no question in their
minds but that Scientology works. That's why they are attack-
ing it. A thousand other philosophies and religions arise every
year with no outcry from the madmen in charge. The hundreds
of thousands of victims of the enemy, as in all fascist actions,
cannot complain. They cannot even talk. They're dead."
  Such an answer has become quite traditional with Hubbard.
In an HCO Bulletin of May 5, 1959, he wrote: "The person
who goes to a psychiatrist usually finds himself betrayed. He
does not receive help, he receives brutality in the form of
electric shocks, brain surgery and other degrading experiences.
Even in the highest form of psychiatry it was common advice
for the psychiatrist to tell the wife that the best cure for her
troubles was to betray her husband, and vice versa." Surpris-
ingly enough, when not speaking from what sounds in-
terestingly close to personal experience, Hubbard has on
occasion acknowledged that processing might cause a "nervous
breakdown" which would require "observation" in a mental
hospital. Describing what he named the "Sad Effect" in an
HCO Policy Letter, he wrote: "We could call this Tearculi
Apathia Magnus and everyone would be in great awe of it.
But I see no reason to follow the Latinated nonsense of
yesterday's failured sciences. Call it something simple and the
auditor will feel he can do something about it and even the
preclear will cheer up a bit. So it is 'the Sad Effect.' This is a
state of great sadness, apathy, and misery and desire for
suicide."
  In Hubbard's now rare confrontations with the outside
world, I found that you can never be sure whether he will be
precise and decisive, as when he discusses the computer-like
qualities of the mind and the statistical perfection of Scien-
tology's *Standard Tech*, or mildly introspective and almost
puzzled, as when, while discussing man's brain and its function
during that filmed interview which is shown at all the free
introductory Scientology sessions, he suddenly interrupts him-

                                             CONCLUSIONS 193

self to say, "What it [the brain] does? Well, I'm not quite
sure...." And some moments later, in this same film, dis-
cussing the insane, he says, "The insane are, well, they're
insane." This is not to imply that Hubbard is ever at a loss
for something to say. He measures the mood of a moment, and
then, with persistently winning charm, satisfies or confounds
a critic or questioner with just the right answer. The last ques-
tion asked by the interviewer who accompanied the British
film crew which visited Hubbard on board his flagship
was "Do you ever think that you might be quite mad?"
I half expected Hubbard to rise up in righteous wrath and
indignation and summarily order the intruders off the vessel,
but he merely rolled the question over in his mind and then
said, with obvious relish, "Oh, yes! The one man in the world
who never believes he's mad, is a madman." And his broad
face, giving him the look of a homey, beardless Santa Claus,
split into a wide grin of sheer pleasure.
  Recently, Eric Barnes, the Church of Scientology's public
relations director for the Eastern U.S., appeared as part of a
panel discussion on a television program and said, "Nowhere
in all the eighteen years of attacks that have been made against
Scientology - and always done in the same pattern - nowhere
has anyone come up with one person who has been harmed
by Scientology." What Barnes meant was that the cases on
record involving individuals who have taken Scientology
processing and ended up in mental hospitals cannot be intro-
duced as evidence against Scientology because these persons
were unwell before Scientology ever touched them. When Dr.
Lewis L. Robbins, a prominent practicing psychiatrist who
was also on the program, asked Barnes if Scientology makes
an effort to determine whether or not someone might be emo-
tionally or psychologically unfit, Barnes answered: "When
someone walks in who's obviously rational, who sits and
talks....We discover that someone has had institutional
processing, or has been treated by a shock treatment, or

194 CONCLUSIONS

lobotomy, or leucotomy, which are the *tools* of the psychiatric
trade, or convulsive drugs of one kind, we say, 'We're sorry,
we cannot help you.' And that is the end of it." Simplistic but
neat.
  So the onus of any criticism is put on the critic. And what
Hubbard knows is really sticking in everyone's craw is the
fact that Scientology works! The only alternative for me then
is to make some further observations about Hubbard's stub-
bornly heuristic approaches, and see where that leads.
  Rollo May, in his review of Dr. Winter's book, wrote: "The
one useful point in dianetics, in my judgment, is helping the
patient to experience his feelings. Yet even this is not original:
it is a form of abreaction, one of Freud's earliest techniques.
As any psychologist knows, the difficulty is that the event
about which the patient works out his feelings usually has no
demonstrable relation to present reality...."
  This question of somehow defining what is fantasy and what
is real brings us to some questions regarding the E-Meter,
that indispensable Scientology tool which John McMasters,
the world's first *clear*, has said measures "disagreements," not
lies. In his already quoted study of the polygraph, or lie
detector, Dr. Burke M. Smith stated: "To be effective an
instrument or a test must be valid and it must be reliable." No
attitude could be more scientific, pragmatic, and in accord
with what Hubbard has said over and over again. Dr. Smith
went on to explain that sufficient evidence to evaluate the
polygraph was lacking because "in the few cases in which
effectiveness has been evaluated, confessions of guilt or at-
tempts to deceive have been commonly taken as criteria for
determining validity. The trouble with this is that in many
cases the confession may have come before or during the
examination, which is thereupon said to have been conclu-
sive!" Dr. Smith cites a specific example, the case of a young
bank manager who was subjected to what Smith called a
"routine" polygraph examination. "He showed violent response

                                             CONCLUSIONS 195

to the question: 'Have you ever stolen any money from the
bank or its customers?' On a peak-of-tension test to specify the
amount of money stolen, he showed strong reactions at the
mention of the sums $800 and $1,100. He could not remember
taking any such sum but, confused and convinced of the
machine's infallibility, he confessed to having stolen $1,000
and told how he must have done it. The bank's auditors
could find no such shortage or manipulation, and so the man-
ager was referred for psychiatric examination." It was found
that "the patient had strongly ambivalent feelings about his
mother and wife and felt guilty about personal financial deal-
ings with them involving the sums of $800 and $1,100. Both
the mother and the wife were customers of the bank."
  The same polygraph test was repeated by another examiner
who also concluded that the bank manager was lying and
must be guilty of theft because of his responses to questions
where the word "customer" was used. Dr. Smith wrote:
"Clearly the original polygraph results were not valid. It was
not deception but an autonomic response to unconscious atti-
tudes that had caused the strong polygraph reactions. The
same effect was shown on a trivial question included as a
control: 'Do you drink coffee?' The manager answered, quickly
and truthfully, 'Yes,' but the polygraph showed a strong emo-
tional reaction. The young man could not explain this, but
psychotherapy revealed that coffee-drinking had been abso-
lutely forbidden during his childhood; the memory of that
prohibition bad been lost or suppressed but remained potent.
...In fact," Dr. Smith concluded, "any word that happens
to have strong emotional connotations for an individual and
that is included in a critical question may elicit a response
that is erroneously attributed to an attempt at deception."
  Dr. Smith describes other "pitfalls that can lead to 'false
positive' or 'false negative' interpretations of a record. Some
people are emotionally highly sensitive even to supposedly
neutral stimuli; others are unresponsive. A person who believes

196 CONCLUSIONS

what he says is true may show no emotional response even
when he says what is objectively untrue. A person who is
ashamed of his name may show emotion when he quite truth-
fully answers 'Yes' to 'Is your name Adolf Schicklgruber?'"
  Finally, Dr. Smith raises certain ethical questions. "To say
or imply," he wrote, "that the machine is infallible is to use
a lie to detect a lie. To elicit admissions through fear of the
machine or misrepresentation of its record is to force a con-
fession....A person undergoing even a routine polygraph
test may inadvertently reveal, particularly in the preexamina-
tion interview, information about himself that he would not
voluntarily have revealed. The polygraph operator is not a
physician or a lawyer or a priest; he is anxious to pass on
whatever details he can find to his superior or to the man who
has hired him. If his findings cast doubt (rightly or wrongly)
on the integrity or reliability of his subject or reveal idiosyn-
crasies or weaknesses, the subject's welfare or entire career
may be harmed. Can such invasions of privacy be justified?
It is said that taking a polygraph test is voluntary. Is it really
voluntary, however, if a refusal can be interpreted as evidence
of guilt or seems likely to jeopardize a job?"
  Yet Scientology uses the E-Meter as an infallible tool in
identifying and locating the most fundamental element of
man: his spirit. And people being processed trust auditor and
meter implicitly, not only because of Scientology's aura of
religious counseling and benevolence, but because the needle
does react, and the auditor seems to know *why*. One girl I
talked to, who had taken assist auditing because she was
having serious problems with her boyfriend, who was a Scien-
tologist, said, of her auditor and the meter: "I never doubted
that he was *capable* of auditing me. As I remember it, vaguely,
he would ask me to take the cans in my hands, which of
course at first horrified me - these jam cans in your hands - and
the E-Meter would react. I always believed I made it react,
if I had something on my mind."

                                             CONCLUSIONS 197

  The fact that a polygraph, much less an E-Meter, is in-
capable of telling fact from fiction is totally ignored by Scien-
tology. People spin tales of past lives as Mark Antony,
Cleopatra, being zapped by nasty Martians on some distant
planet, pinpointing a dramatic moment 38 trillion years back,
and come away from an auditing session convinced they have
been telling the truth. It is as if Scientology ultimately *wants*
everyone to believe in Gorilla Goals and "Boo-Hoos" and
Being Three Feet In Back Of Your Head.

                             IV

It is naive and facile simply to label Scientology a fraud and
a con; that is not even the point. A con is when you get some-
body to pay out money for something you say you will do for
them, or sell them, and then you do neither. Scientology gives
its disciples *exactly* what it promises, from the very first mo-
ment a lecturer defines "reality" in Hubbard's terms. If, at that
moment, you "agree," you accept the definition and believe
yourself to be a bundle of chaotic distortions and spiritual
contradictions which Hubbard's system *can* salvage and en-
shrine in the universe as a truly free-floating spirit, then Scien-
tology obviously succeeds. The only question you have to ask
yourself is whether or not L. Ron Hubbard's vision of life is
one you fundamentally agree with. Everything else, the now-
terminated "suppressions," the heartbreaking disconnections,
the so-called "billion-year" contracts which bind youngsters to
Scientology for "ever," the accusation that it is tampering with
people's minds, all that is secondary. That may sound out-
rageous to you, but every step of Scientology evolves from the
several declarations L. Ron Hubbard makes about what life
*really* is. If you agree with his basic assumptions, then what-
ever tampering is done to your psyche is nothing less than
what you have "agreed" you want done so that you, too, can

198 CONCLUSIONS

achieve that perfect state of emptiness which he defines as
clear.
  It is a cruel truth, but one I feel I must subscribe to if I am
to believe that any sincere determination to keep people from
hurting themselves is not enough to justify banning a philos-
ophy or religion. In a society which chooses to call itself free,
any body of thought can call itself a philosophy and any one
individual can found a religion.
  If you can make yourself forget the menace of Scientology's
Ethics, and forget about some of Hubbard's weirder inven-
tions, one thing remains as a simple and genuine danger.
Scientology's intention is to create a Brave New World with
no room for outsiders, which, if you stop and think for a
moment, is you and me. The pitiable converse to this already
occurs every time a devoted scientologist leaves the warmth
and security of any of Scientology's intensely active centers -
remember that every Scientology office *always* has something
going on - and returns, for a time, to the erratic panorama of
contemporary society. I know of several instances when mem-
bers of families have returned from Los Angeles, home of
Scientology's American Saint Hill Organization, or from Eng-
land, or particularly from the Sea Org, one of Hubbard's
floating sanctums, and for two days have impressed their
loved ones with the love and purity which seems to glow
from their very being. Then, because they are not surrounded
by fellow Scientologists whose presence recharges their cells
with the Right Words and predetermined responses to that
constant expression of Scientology's truths, these people dim
and darken. Nothing around them seems sufficiently real. It is
as if they have come down off a very sweet and shining trip,
and only a return to the safety of their Scientology world will
restore their functioning realities.
  Finally, I don't really know what L. Ron Hubbard believes.
I've often wondered whether or not he ever read Dr. Norden-
holz's book with its dry postulatings of what might be done

                                             CONCLUSIONS 199

with man's consciousness, or whether Buckminster Fuller's
vivid blasts about the Game of Life made more than a passing
impression. When he wrote of his visit to Heaven in his HCO
Bulletin of May 11, 1963, complete with a description of the
Gates, was he only speaking in allegory? Does he really believe
that *thetans* have done all the things he has written and said
they have done, possess all the powers they are presumed to
possess; and raising Scientologists to an advanced level of
ability where they will be able to absorb it all is the true
heart of Scientology? Or is it simply a brilliantly conceived
system of programming a human being so that after a certain
amount of "processing," at a certain level, he will be prepared
to believe...*anything*?
  When all of L. Ron Hubbard's theories and mouthings are
reduced to their essentials, when the *thetan* stands alone,
stripped of his theological trappings of "games," "past lives,"
"randomity," "time tracks," and "implants," one tiny, nagging
suspicion lingers on: Is it possible that all of us are simply
involved in yet another of this man's vivid flights of fantastic
fiction, and it is all nothing less than a superbly evoked living
nightmare, manipulated somewhere by a giant typewriter in
the sky?


EPILOGUE

On Friday, November 21, 1969, John McMaster, the first
human on earth to achieve Scientology's beatific enlighten-
ment known as Clear, sat down and wrote a long letter to his
leader and mentor, L. Ron Hubbard. He began by recounting
his unpleasant encounter in 1967 with the Sea Org's Ethics
Mission - the Sea Org being Hubbard's floating arm, persistently
expanding and making its presence felt by popping up just off
shore from this or that Scientology organization to watchdog
what was going on. McMaster recalled, gratefully, how Hub-
bard himself had stepped in to save him from the Ethics Mis-
sion; "You came to my rescue" is the way he expressed it. He
went on to say that he had been wrong to let the matter drop
at the time, "because what happened to me has happened in
the last two years, unjustly to many, many people across the
earth."
  In his letter, McMaster described the activities of the Ethics
Mission as "the tyrrany [sic] of form monitoring function."
Growing gently cautionary, he declared that "People are afraid
to talk about their basic feelings even in a session. Many have
told me so. Our organizations are not safe enough and hitting
them with savage and vicious ethics does not help." The point
he was making was that using Ethics to solve Scientology's
problems was in reality creating greater and more dangerous
problems. Then he dropped his bomb: he tendered his resigna-
tion from the Sea Org and thus from Scientology itself. His
reason?

  So that such a thing of form monitoring function stops dead
  and it shall never happen to me or any other person again.

                                                         201

202 EPILOGUE

  It is impossible to know from the letter whether one specific
incident finally prompted the man to take a more careful look
at what he had been living for so many years. He cites but
two; the alleged kidnapping and dungeoning of an extremely
successful Scientologist named Alan Walter, and the as-yet
unsolved murders of two Scientologists in Los Angeles late in
1969. Concerning Walter, he wrote that the man "could not
be the sour of the current existing condition - " I assume a
condition which would have been defined by Hubbard as
presenting a clear threat to Scientology. "Whatever his nega-
tive actions may or may not have been, they could have had
no significance whatsoever if there had not been vast fields of
fertile soil for them to grow in." What McMaster treats with
such delicate circumspection is the wild rumor extant in Scien-
tology circles at Walter had been called to a meeting with
Hubbard when one of the ships was anchored off Cadiz. He
had flown over, had been piped aboard with pomp and cere-
mony, and had then been seized, shackled, and thrown below
decks where, the tale continues, he lingers even yet. Concern-
ing the brutal killings of the two Scientologists, McMaster
writes: "These last two ghastly murders of our students near
ASHO in Los Angeles, one of whom is Clear, need never have
happened, if we hadn't been mocking up Enemy so solidly."
To interpret that as simply as possible, Scientology teaches its
followers to deal with that which represents an Enemy by in
effect giving it substance, a tangible reality - tiny clay figurines,
for example - and then dealing with these mock-ups decisively.
The only shattering conclusion to be drawn from what Mc-
Masters says is that these two had come to represent the Enemy
so solidly for someone that they were dealt with too decisively.
The casual possibility of this makes the blood run cold.
  Hubbard's response to the McMaster letter - if one is to be-
lieve the lurid tale now circulating among those who fled the
movement at about the same time - was to send some of his

                                                EPILOGUE 203

Ethics squad over to Staten Island where McMaster was living
and allegedly try to kidnap him. McMaster is said to have
managed a telephone call to another formidable ex-Scientolo-
gist named Bernard Green, who in turn called McMaster's
lawyer. The upshot of this story is that the Ethics mob melted
away, apparently fearful of attracting the attention of local
police. What followed sounds even more like a badly written
espionage melodrama. Convinced that all airports were under
surveillance by members of the Ethics Mission eager to grab
him, McMaster was spirited on board a Greek freighter bound
for his home, South Africa. Now safely there - he was met by
his father who had apparently been alerted to local efforts at
nabbing his son - he still entertains hopes of some kind of a
rapprochement. At least that is what Bernard Green told me.
He used that word, *rapprochement*, when he said a meeting
had actually been proposed between McMaster, himself, and
Hubbard on neutral territory, in Switzerland. Green seemed
to find this perfectly plausible, that the three of them might all
sit down and calmly discuss their various grievances. (Let me
remind you again that an overwhelming number of former
Scientologists would return to the movement instantly if they
felt Hubbard had made certain sincere changes in the organi-
zation's structure.) McMaster himself closed his letter by
saying he wished to return home and do "the Hubbard
Standard Dianetic Course and continue to distribute our Tech
to the people of earth." Obviously, he wanted to keep the door
open, hoping still that Hubbard might see the tragedy of his
ways and make some changes.
  I suppose I can understand a man of the devotion of John
McMaster closing his eyes to instances of inelegant punish-
ment performed in the name of Scientology. After all, his own
radiating sense of forgiveness, his electric innocence and ap-
parent inner peace, have served as living proof that Scientology
can indeed do what it claims. What I cannot understand is an
offensive air of righteousness that pervades the conversations

204 EPILOGUE

of some of the many other Scientologists who left simulta-
neously with the dissemination of the McMaster letter. Bernard
Green, for example, who is a small, chunkily built man with
an incessant bouncing joviality about him, claims to have been
Hubbard's confidant for twenty years, from the very begin-
ning, having assumed numerous responsibilities in spreading
The Word to the four corners of the globe. He recounted some
of the more grisly tales floating around throughout the move-
ment's disenchanted members with a relish bordering on glee.
The stories, none substantiated, are certainly terrifying: a
seventy-two-year-old woman hurled down a flight of stairs
by members of the Sea Org's Ethics Mission; two children,
one five years old, the other four-and-a-half, put into
chains on one of the Sea Org's ships; a man in Los Angeles
punished for some anti-Scientological action by having high-
pressure water hoses turned on him until he was pounded
senseless. There is also an allegation that the Church of Scien-
tology in Manhattan operates a "jail" in Brooklyn for enemies
of the movement. The atrocities, and they can certainly be
called that if true, seem to represent an inspiring aspect to be
recalled by all who have left what one ex-Scientologist soberly
refers to as "the paramilitary structure of Scientology."
  Green, a man who clearly seems to be enjoying the upheaval
he is part of, asked if I believed any of the stories. I could
only say that they didn't sound impossible, considering that
the policies of Scientology's Ethics do indeed exist, are avail-
able in one of the movement's widely sold books, and are
apparently being energetically practiced by Hubbard's Sea
Org Missionaries. What of course I cannot and will not under-
stand, ever, is what took everybody so long *if*, as is now
claimed, these horror stories have been common knowledge
for literally years. Green's answer that all of them were being
led on by what he calls "the golden carrot" - Hubbard's promise
of Total Freedom - is totally inadequate. Unless, of course,
they were led to believe not that Scientology was capable of

                                                EPILOGUE 205

developing and exploiting their existing abilities, but that it
could and would make them all Super-Beings. Super-Beings,
as history has taught us, can blithely ignore most of what goes
on around them because they are involved in the business of
being Super.
  We must never forget that no matter what Hubbard has
done, he has commanded an incredible affectionate loyalty
from those who considered themselves close to him. Even
today, with the news that Scientology has been fiscally re-
organized from top to bottom so that 90 per cent and not 10
per cent of all monies will be paid in to Hubbard personally,
even with Hubbard himself off on a new tangent, rhetorically
asking his followers "Who is the Messiah?" only to answer with
a parable involving a powerful, barrel-chested man with red
hair, even now, John McMaster closes his letter as follows:

  I shall never withdraw my allegiance from your love or the
  product of your love, nor shall I withdraw allegiance from all
  people of earth and their attempts to attain Infinite Freedom,
  particularly those who work with our Tech to further man's
  attempts to attain Infinite Freedom.
  I shall continue to give your love to the world. As always,
  my love to you, (signed) John McMaster.

  The entire letter, its tone so sincerely beseeching, so devoted,
and - yes - so almost obedient, made me remember all over
again the first time I had ever seen John McMaster. His
manner in front of that adoring crowd, and his certainty, and
his loving benevolence, and his infinite patience with that in
all of us which is most uncertain - our capacity to *believe* - it
all came back. And now he had quit. Once more, I heard him
saying to all of us, "How can there be two sides to the truth?"
  I think John McMaster may finally have answered that
question for himself.


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