Inside Scientology Part 2

This reframing from the "mental science" of Dianetics to the religion of Scientology was a typically canny move by Hubbard, which picked up on the national mood. In 1950, more than half of the American population were members of one or another Christian congregation; by the end of the decade, that number had reached 69 percent. "Churches were by far the most trusted inst.i.tution in American life [in the 1950s]-ahead of schools, radio and newspapers, and the government itself," the historian Stephen Whitfield noted in his book on 1950s America, The Culture of the Cold War. It was probably not lost on L. Ron Hubbard that the most popular therapist and self-help guru in America, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, was also a minister. In an age of increasing anxiety and paranoia, faith was seen as a route to sound mental health. Peale's best-selling book, The Power of Positive Thinking, was published in 1952, the same year Hubbard announced the advent of Scientology; it would remain on bestseller lists for years. Cloaking Scientology in religious garb was practical on numerous levels. Certainly it would make the organization seem more respectable-"in my opinion, we couldn't get worse public opinion than what we have had, or less customers with what we've got to sell," Hubbard noted in his letter-it would also allow auditors to sidestep the rules regarding certification for psychological counseling. As pract.i.tioners of "mental science," Dianetics and Scientology auditors had been scrutinized for lacking the appropriate medical or psychological licenses; as clergy, they could counsel whomever they wanted, under the protection of a church. They could also claim tax-exempt status,* which Hubbard would later explain to his flock was a fundamental reason for taking the religious route. "No one ever saw it as a religion," Jana Daniels explained. "It was a most unpopular idea until it was explained by Mr. Hubbard that for tax reasons, a church would get a better shake."

Hubbard spent the next six months laying the groundwork for Scientology's evolution as a religion. On February 18, 1954, a Scientologist named Burton Farber filed incorporation papers in Los Angeles for the Church of Scientology of California, considered by Scientologists to be the first official Scientologist church. L. Ron Hubbard, the adventurer and science fiction writer turned scientist and philosopher, was now the founder of his own church.

Hubbard then set about creating a worldwide spiritual corporation. Individual Scientology organizations, or franchises, would become churches (though members would refer to them as "orgs"). Every church would cede 10 percent of its gross income to a larger organization, the Hubbard a.s.sociation of Scientologists International (HASI), also known as the Mother Church, a so-called religious fellowship, according to its incorporation papers, which also sold to the franchises books, E-meters, and tapes of Hubbard's teachings. The HASI was incorporated in England and controlled by L. Ron Hubbard-who also controlled every church of Scientology, in practice. But each separate org had its own shadow president and board of directors, which allowed them to appear, at least on paper, independent. "Hubbard had learned from his mistakes," wrote the former Scientologist Jon Atack in his 1990 history of the Church of Scientology, A Piece of Blue Sky. "He was not on the board of every corporation, so a check of records would not show his outright control. He did, however, collect signed, undated resignations from directors before their appointment." Perhaps more significant, Hubbard also controlled the bank accounts of these organizations.

Hubbard presented Scientology to the public as a true religious movement-complete with an eight-pointed Scientology cross, wedding and funeral rites, and an ever-growing catalog of "scripture," which according to Hubbard's decree was the true status of his writings. Auditing sessions were often referred to as "confessionals." In future years, Scientology officials would be referred to, and ordained, as "ministers," complete with clerical collars.

To sell his new faith, Hubbard used the techniques of modern marketing and advertising; from his newly created Hubbard Communication Office, he directed his followers to aggressively spread the word. "If advertised products don't have good word-of-mouth they don't sell," Hubbard admonished them. How that word-of-mouth was created changed, depending on the locale. To tap into the loneliness and disconnectedness of city dwellers, Hubbard instructed one of his British followers, Ray Kemp, to advertise this offer, together with a phone number, in the London evening newspapers: "I will talk to anyone about anything." "We were inundated with calls," Kemp later recalled. "Everyone from potential suicides to a girl who couldn't decide which of three men to marry."

In both England and the United States, Hubbard exploited fear and concern about polio by encouraging his followers to run ads in the paper stating that a "research foundation" was looking for polio victims willing to try out a new cure. A similar ad was used to attract those suffering from asthma and arthritis.

Another technique Hubbard advocated was scanning the daily papers to find anyone who'd been recently "victimized one way or the other by life" and then, "as speedily as possible [to make] a personal call on the bereaved or injured person." Auditors, Hubbard said, were perfectly within their rights to call themselves either "researchers" or "ministers."

Once a person arrived at the church, Scientologists presented themselves in one of two ways, depending on the nature of the potential recruit: as members of a humanitarian movement or as students of a new science that could expand the person's mind and horizons. Wishing to make sure that, unlike Dianetics, Scientology would never slip from his control, Hubbard created strict and aggressive policies to curtail the actions of independent operators, those who aimed to use Scientology outside the sanction of the organized church. There would be no negotiation with such "squirrels," as Hubbard called them. Instead, he recommended legal action as a way to shut them down. "The law can be used very easily to hara.s.s, and enough hara.s.sment on somebody who is simply on the thin edge anyway ... will generally be sufficient to cause his professional decease," Hubbard explained. "If possible, of course, ruin him utterly."

The founder of Scientology earned a modest $125 per week for his labor. But he also earned a commission from the sale of E-meters and training manuals-sold through HASI-and received royalties from his books. Lectures also provided him with income. The Church of Scientology hosted weekend seminars, called "Congresses," at which Hubbard would give a talk and occasionally audit members of the audience. Congresses could be highly lucrative: one in the late 1950s was said to earn more than $100,000 in a single weekend. Whatever Hubbard made from these appearances was pure profit: the church paid his expenses and also provided him and his growing family-between 1952 and 1958, Mary Sue gave birth to Diana, Quentin, Suzette, and Arthur-with a house and a car.

In 1956, the Church of Scientology's gross receipts were just under $103,000. By 1959, the church was making roughly $250,000 per year. Hubbard received about $108,000 during the four-year period of 195559, much of it earned after he stopped drawing his $125 per week salary and was paid instead a percentage of the Church of Scientology's gross profits.

This exceeded the salary of the president of the United States at the time, and it also outstripped the earnings of many Fortune 500 executives. But Hubbard did not see wealth as inconsistent with righteousness, and the years he'd spent advancing his own interests now served him particularly well. Hubbard had always looked at his fiction writing with a commercial eye; early on he'd a.n.a.lyzed how much money could be earned from various genres and pursued the most lucrative course. Now he looked at Scientology through a similar lens.

Hubbard envisioned a church that was organized in a strictly top-down structure, which merged science, religion, and successful business practices. Efficiency would be the main marker of success. "The prosperity of any organization is directly proportional to the speed of its particles-goods, people, papers," Hubbard said. The standard method of therapy-namely, the spontaneous interaction of patient and therapist-was grossly inefficient, in Hubbard's view. Even Dianetics had relied too much on human interaction. Scientology would streamline the process of enlightenment.

The local org was, as Hubbard designed it, a full-service operation, tightly structured to facilitate the "processing" of clients as efficiently as possible. A sales team, known as registrars, met with clients (often simply called PCs, short for preclears), discussed their needs, and then recommended a product, usually an "intensive," a package of auditing sessions. The registrars procured payment on the spot. From there, the client moved to the service delivery team, led by a case supervisor who worked with the auditor to design and oversee the client's process. Ethics officers, who were responsible for disciplining and rehabilitating wayward clients, handled any problems within the organization. Another department, known as the "Public Division," would supervise outreach and fundraising.

Into this structure flowed the money received from paying customers, which in turn funded not only the smaller organizations but also the Mother Church, which licensed the orgs to sell and market Scientology services and also monitored their sales and membership statistics. From the 10 percent t.i.the that each franchise paid to the Mother Church, Hubbard took a 10 percent cut. How much the founder made from Scientology during this period was unknown to the membership at large. He often claimed to invest far more in Scientology than he earned; on the other hand, he boasted to friends that he had more than $7 million stashed in Swiss bank accounts.

With this structure in place, Scientology would grow into "the McDonald's hamburger chain of religion," as Jon Atack described it, with independent franchised churches springing up all over the world. Hubbard's doctrine, known as "standard tech," was marketed and ultimately trademarked. Church officials would later compare Scientology's trademarks (each one "a symbol which a.s.sures the public of a certain quality," in the words of one Scientology attorney) to Coca-Cola's.

While this might have been an off-the-cuff statement, Scientology did, in fact, mimic certain features of the Coca-Cola Company. Its orgs functioned as processing plants, churning out an identical product at every site worldwide. As the years went by, some of its core doctrine would be referred to not as sacred teachings but as "trade secrets." The Church of Scientology would go to court to protect its proprietary rights over this material: litigation, in fact, would become its hallmark.

When Scientology made its debut, few in the mainstream took it seriously. In one of the first articles about Hubbard's new spiritual science, published in Time on December 22, 1952, the magazine laid out the predominant view of the newly self-designated "Dr." Hubbard. "Now, the founder of still another cult, he claims to have discovered the ultimate secrets of life and the universe, and to be able to cure everything, including cancer," the article stated. "His latest ology is compounded of equal parts of science fiction, Dianetics (with 'auditing,' 'preclears' and engrams), and plain jabberwocky."

It did not help Hubbard's reputation that his latest books struck many as even more implausible than Dianetics. Hubbard's 1951 book, Science of Survival, laid out a theory of human behavior based on eighty emotional "tones," or levels, ranging from +40.0 (serenity of being) to 40 (total failure). The higher up the tone scale a person was positioned, the more emotionally and spiritually alive he or she would be. A tone, Hubbard said, affected a person's overall att.i.tude or vibe, as well as the ability to communicate and to relate to others; it even determined a person's smell. People with body odor, Hubbard noted, were invariably lower on the tone scale than those with none; the same held true for those with bad breath. "The body is normally sweet-smelling down to 2.0"-the tone of "antagonism"-"but begins to exude chronically certain unpleasant effluvia from 2.0 down." But as people were audited "up" the tone scale, they would most likely lose these embarra.s.sing traits.*

In his 1952 book The History of Man, Hubbard ventured away from the psychological into what could easily be read as pure fantasy. But Hubbard began the book by telling readers it was "a cold-blooded and factual account" of the past sixty trillion years of their own existence. h.o.m.o sapiens had a genetic line that confirmed much of what Darwin laid out in his evolutionary theory, Hubbard said, but Scientology helped fill in the blanks by explaining the various phases of development through the prism of engrams. Some engrams on the evolutionary chain could be traced back to a mollusk-centered era, dominated by a deadly incident known as the Clam. Auditing a person on this incident could be dangerous; simply asking this question-"Can you imagine a clam sitting on the beach, opening and closing its sh.e.l.l very rapidly?" -could cause the person severe jaw pain. "One such victim, after hearing about a clam death, could not use his jaws for three days. Another 'had to have' two molars extracted because of the resulting ache."

Elsewhere in The History of Man, Hubbard described engrams that arose from traumas suffered during the Paleogene and Neanderthal eras, and finally, as they affected modern humans. He explained that thetans moved from body to body, arriving after the death of one body at a halfway house called an "implant station" where they were deluged with pictures-"stills of vacant lots, houses, backyards"-which served as what Hubbard called a "forgetter," erasing the thetan's past life and thus priming it to receive its next body. Some of these stations, Hubbard added, were on Mars.

The FBI was a recipient of another genre of Hubbard's writing. The founder of Scientology had maintained his correspondence with the bureau since denouncing his a.s.sociates and his wife as Communists in 1951. Though he continued to view attacks upon Scientologists as the defamations of "Communist-connected personnel," as he wrote in one letter, Hubbard had become increasingly antagonistic toward psychiatrists, who, he seemed to believe, were intent on destroying him. In one 1955 missive, he reported that several Scientologists had gone "suddenly and inexplicably insane," an event that he believed had nothing to do with Scientology counseling. Rather, an "LSD attack" launched by a psychiatrist intent on doing harm had caused this misfortune. LSD, Hubbard noted, was the "insanity producing drug so favored by the APA."

By the autumn of 1955, the FBI had received so many similar letters from Hubbard that they stopped responding. "Appears mental," one agent wrote on a rambling Hubbard missive of this kind. But Hubbard was undeterred and persisted in sharing with the U.S. government what he considered his groundbreaking discoveries.

In April 1956, the FBI received a pamphlet t.i.tled "Brain-Washing: A Synthesis of the Russian Textbook on Psychopolitics," which Hubbard told them was the Church of Scientology's reprinting of what "appeared to be a Communist manual." The bureau examined it and concluded that its authenticity was doubtful "since it lacks doc.u.mentation of source material and Communist words and phrases." It was widely a.s.sumed that Hubbard had written the booklet himself. He was also thought to be the anonymous author of a pamphlet called "All About Radiation," signed by "a Nuclear Physicist and a Medical Doctor." The text promoted a vitamin product called Dianazene, claiming it could treat and prevent radiation sickness, as well as certain cancers. The Food and Drug Administration, having been given a copy, investigated these claims. In 1958 the FDA confiscated, and then destroyed, a shipment of twenty-one thousand Dianazene tablets, which Hubbard was selling as a substance that prevented radiation sickness.

In the wake of the Dianazene seizure, authorities increased their scrutiny of Hubbard's activities. As his FBI file thickened by the day, the CIA also decided to open a file on his burgeoning organization. But making their way through the tangled mora.s.s of ad hoc corporations and sh.e.l.l companies that composed the Church of Scientology proved daunting. In addition to more than a hundred churches of Scientology, various other groups existed as part of the web, with names like Hubbard Guidance Center, American Society for Disaster Relief, Society of Consulting Ministers, and Academy of Religious Arts and Sciences. By the end of the 1950s, Scientology had grown into a tremendously complex network of businesses, not all of which were churches; all, however, sent money to the Mother Church. Figuring out how the whole conglomerate worked was, then as now, nearly impossible.

After a year of investigation, the CIA had discovered no hard evidence of wrongdoing. Scientologists nonetheless felt under siege. Hubbard began spending an increasing amount of time in England, where both the HASI and the Hubbard Communications Office, the issuer of myriad memos and policies to organizations worldwide, were now based. In 1959, he decided to move there permanently and purchased a 225-year-old estate in the Suss.e.x countryside known as the Saint Hill Manor. A weathered Georgian mansion with eleven bedrooms and an indoor swimming pool, it sat on fifty-five acres amid rolling hills and flowering rhododendrons. This, Hubbard decided, would be Scientology's new home.

Located just outside the tiny town of East Grinstead, Saint Hill was the former residence of the Maharaja of Jaipur. In a note published in the journal of the Explorer's Club, of which Hubbard was a member, the founder of Scientology said he had "sort of won" the estate in a poker game. In fact, the house had been up for sale for almost a decade before Hubbard abruptly purchased it for the fire-sale price of 14,000 (about $70,000). The people of East Grinstead had no idea that the founder of a religious movement had moved into their village. Most newspapers, in fact, ignored Hubbard's a.s.sociation with Scientology and described "Dr. L. Ron Hubbard" as a celebrated American scientist and humanitarian, who had moved with his wife and their four young children from America to conduct, among other things, horticultural experiments.

At Saint Hill, Hubbard was industrious and almost manically busy, spending his days conducting research, training and coaching new auditors, and lecturing several times a week. Hubbard also ran all of Scientology's organizations, which by the early 1960s were located in a dozen cities in the United States and in Canada, Mexico, and South America, as well as throughout Europe and in countries such as South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Rhodesia. "This was a guy working eighteen hours a day, seven days a week for years on end," said Alan Walter, who was one of a number of young people interested in Hubbard's theories who made the pilgrimage to Saint Hill. "Definitely not the Lord of the Manor."

Contrary to Scientology's later claims, L. Ron Hubbard did not single-handedly come up with all of Scientology's techniques. He was helped by scores of special a.s.sistants like Walter, who came to Saint Hill to attend the Special Briefing Course, in which the work, to a large degree, revolved around the creation of new processes or auditing techniques. "You had professors, doctors, paupers, multimillionaires-you name it," said Walter. "They were your students, your fellow cla.s.smates, your coaches. So the mixture of knowledge was enormous. There were a hundred students on the course at any given time at Saint Hill-the top processors from all over the world."

About half of these elite auditors were sponsored by a Scientology organization; the rest paid their own way. Walter, an Australian businessman and former professional Australian-rules soccer player, was part of the latter category. "I was between jobs and I didn't quite know what I was going to do with myself, which was a perfect way to go study something," said Walter. "I had no agenda other than to get knowledge."

Most of the students were seduced by Hubbard's charisma, though many remained skeptical of the leader's credentials. "We all saw him as a bulls.h.i.t artist because you'd have to be forty people to have lived what he said he did," said Walter. Hubbard claimed to be a doctor of philosophy, having earned a degree from Sequoia University. "Everybody knew that had come out of a diploma mill. But that was accepted. Don't forget, we'd come out of the 1950s when everything was thought to be a facade. Just about everyone was pretending to be someone they weren't."

Hubbard's academic bona fides may have been suspect, but his focus on the technology and its results struck Walter as admirable. The criterion for success was easy to judge: a person's life improved after auditing. If auditing worked, "the guy became more alert, more aware, and life became easier. If he didn't, it was back to the drawing board."

A Scientology process, as it developed, was a formulaic type of therapy-Walter called it "structured therapy." A common "ident.i.ty process," for example, might ask a subject to list all of his or her qualities to find out what aspects of the self the person might keep hidden. One item might have particular "charge," indicated by a jump of the needle on the E-meter, which would suggest to the auditor that a problem had been located. At that point, the auditor would dig deeper. "The idea was to find out what games you were playing without even realizing it, and what might be motivating you to act in certain ways," Walter said. Upon recognizing these hidden motivations or "games," the person would generally feel tremendous relief, followed by a sense of heightened self-knowledge and, ultimately, freedom. "The idea," he said, "was to come out of a session with all this awareness that you were a spiritual being."

New techniques were constantly being devised and refined by trial and error, with Hubbard serving as coach. "Hubbard would arrive early in the morning and pin the process up on the door, and then we'd come in and copy it down and run it on each other," said Walter. The teams kept track of everything that happened during these sessions and then submitted their notes for Hubbard's review. Each evening, Hubbard read these notes, made revisions, and then posted a new set of processes for the next morning. This is how, between 1962 and 1964, many of Scientology's core auditing procedures and many of its theoretical precepts were developed.

Walter was in awe of Hubbard's raw ability to dissect problems, and people. "He could tear you apart if he wanted to-just rip you to shreds, and then put you back together again." Having played sports his whole life, Walter saw that kind of process as proof of Hubbard's commitment to helping his students improve, and he gladly allowed himself to serve as test subject. "I loved it, and I got tremendous gains from that kind of coaching."

But as time went on, Walter's mind was slowly reshaped, though he wouldn't realize it for many years. Later he'd understand that this as a byproduct of other, less positive effects of Scientology's auditing processes and especially its particular use of language. Hubbard's word for spirit, for example, was theta. No one spoke of love in Scientology; they had affinity. The word auditing no longer referred to a task that accountants performed but instead meant "to listen and compute" in accordance with the standard, a word that seemed to denote the accepted application of Hubbard's technology. But commenting on the precise definition of standard, Walter said, "Who knows what that meant? It meant whatever he wanted it to mean," and this malleable use of words served as an effective instrument of control.

Before long, the accepted definitions for ordinary words had vanished, replaced with new meanings that separated Scientology from other subjects and Scientologists from other people. "It's very, very subtle stuff, changing words and giving them a whole different meaning-it creates an artificial reality," said Walter. "What happens is this new linguistic system undermines your ability to even monitor your own thoughts because nothing means what it used to mean. I couldn't believe that I could get taken over like that. I was the most independent-minded idiot that ever walked the planet. But that's what happened."

By the early 1960s, a close cadre of true believers surrounded L. Ron Hubbard. Most were young-Alan Walter was twenty-five-and convinced that Scientology would "unlock the truth and knowledge of our spiritual, mental, and human potential," as Walter put it.

But those who'd known Hubbard since the 1950s, and had once believed this as well, were no longer so sure. By the time he moved to Saint Hill, most of Hubbard's early acolytes had departed, disillusioned with Hubbard's leadership and also, in some cases, with the substance of Scientology itself. Helen O'Brien, for example, once among Hubbard's closest confidantes, had begun seeing the "holes appear in [the soap] bubble," as she phrased it, as far back as 1952. Scientology, though rooted in the same principles as Dianetics, was not like the previous movement. "The tremendous appeal of Dianetics came from Hubbard's apparent certainty that you could easily clear yourself in present time of the heritage of woe from past misadventures," she wrote in Dianetics in Limbo. But Hubbard no longer seemed interested in that. He was focused on spiritual awareness, constantly revising his theories on how better to attain it. He now spoke at length about imagination-something Hubbard had once tagged a "lie factory" for its inherent untrustworthiness. He introduced a technique called "creative processing," whereby he encouraged adherents to "mock up," or make up, scenarios and cast themselves in various roles. The switch from factual recall to imaginative invention struck O'Brien as almost a betrayal of the movement's core values. Before long, "the joy and frankness" that had imbued every Scientology lecture "shifted to pontification," she said. The therapies, which had once involved significant give-and-take between auditor and preclear, now seemed like "highly mechanistic verbal performances."

Then there was the matter of L. Ron Hubbard himself. Though he was charming in the presence of paying customers, a "weird foxiness" made him impossible to work for. "As soon as we became responsible for Hubbard's interests, a projection of hostility began, and he doubted and double-crossed us, and sniped at us without pause," O'Brien wrote. By October 1953, the work environment had become so toxic that she and her husband, John, resigned from the Hubbard a.s.sociation of Scientologists and closed the Philadelphia operation.

Hubbard seemed to accept O'Brien's departure. He was far less charitable when it came to others. This was particularly true with regard to his son Nibs, Hubbard's eldest child. A distant father even with his most recent brood, Hubbard had almost completely absented himself from the lives of Nibs and his sister, Katherine. They had grown up with their mother and grandparents in Bremerton, Washington, with only a scant idea of what their father was doing. But when Dianetics was published, L. Ron Hubbard became a celebrity. And Nibs, a red-haired, husky young man who had long sought a relationship with his father, saw his chance. Upon turning eighteen, in 1952, he made his way to Phoenix, intent on becoming a Scientologist.

Hubbard welcomed this new a.s.sociation with his son. Within a few years, Nibs became an auditor-"one of the best auditors in the business," as Hubbard described him-and the executive director of the Church of Scientology in Washington, D.C. Then, in November 1959, Nibs abruptly left Scientology, claiming that he could no longer afford to support his family on his meager income. Viewing his son's defection as yet one more act of treachery, Hubbard immediately drafted a letter instructing his executives to ban Nibs from Scientology and withdraw his credentials if he tried to practice Scientology independently.

Hubbard stopped short of writing to the FBI about Nibs and his transgressions (something he might have done just a few years earlier). Instead, he made an example of Nibs, showing his flock the precise consequences of stepping out of line. Hubbard declared to his followers that Nibs had "unconfessed overts," or hidden crimes, which had caused him to leave. Hubbard would soon see all such departures from his movement as stemming from unspoken transgressions, an idea that became deeply entrenched in Scientology theory and philosophy. To this day, anyone who leaves Scientology is instantly viewed as guilty of a crime. But in 1959, this idea was new, and a telling indicator of the extent to which Hubbard's own psychology was driving his new movement.

To handle perceived traitors, Hubbard devised a new form of auditing called a "security check." This was interrogation by another name, with the E-meter serving as a helpful tool. Security checking gave tremendous power to auditors; Hubbard thought of them as "detectives" and charged them with uncovering unspoken thoughts, called "withholds" in his ever-evolving language. Under this examination, to which everyone in Hubbard's world-including household staff, students, and auditors-would eventually be subjected, a battery of questions probed both public and private aspects of personal history. Had the subject committed robbery or murder? What s.e.xual proclivities and perversions* characterized his or her behavior? Had he or she ever been a member of the Communist Party, or been sent to the Church of Scientology as a saboteur? Had the person ever harbored a critical thought about L. Ron Hubbard?

The smallest misstep, such as a minor critique of the movement or a slight doubt as to its authority, was enough to warrant punishment, making the security check a particularly effective method of thought reform. "A Scientologist is heavily indoctrinated into the idea that if he finds himself being critical of Hubbard or the Church or its executives, then the very fact of his being critical is proof positive of the fact that he himself is harboring undisclosed dirty deeds," according to the former Scientologist Bent Corydon, who wrote L. Ron Hubbard: Madman or Messiah?, an intensely critical book about the founder of Scientology. "When somebody can look into your thoughts, giving you no option for privacy of consideration and opinion, some devastating things occur," Corydon stated. "This is especially so if you are (or consider that you are) dependent upon the approval of that somebody or group for your continued well-being and very survival as a spiritual being."

Numerous new philosophies were born and sold during the mid-twentieth century in the United States, many of them led by charismatic leaders who promised scientifically guaranteed remedies for everything from sickness to unemployment. With the exception of a few-Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, the Reverend Billy Graham-most of those prophets have long since been forgotten, along with their techniques. So why did L. Ron Hubbard's creed continue to exist, and to grow, well into the 1960s and beyond? Perhaps the easiest answer would be the singular force that was L. Ron Hubbard himself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In February 1965, Hubbard wrote a seven-page manifesto t.i.tled "Keeping Scientology Working." This was his Sermon on the Mount, something Scientologists consider a sacred doc.u.ment, which in future years would serve as both an instruction manual and a rallying call to legions of idealistic believers. In it, Hubbard declared himself the sole creator, or "Source," of Scientology's technology, negating the work done by his many collaborators, and defined his movement as the salvation of the human race. His followers were charged with a divine mission to "hammer out of existence" any philosophy or technique that might compete with his own.

Recognizing a change in climate, a number of individuals left Saint Hill, and Scientology, shortly after reading this doc.u.ment. But those like Walter, who stayed in the church (he did so for another thirteen years), were forced to suppress their own ideas for fear of being denounced as "squirrels." "From that moment on," said Walter, "n.o.body but L. Ron Hubbard discovered anything."

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

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

PART II.

Chapter 4.

The Bridge to Total Freedom.

Do you know that absolutely Standard Tech-complete, utter, hairline, Standard Tech-used in organizations throughout the world, will at least triple the stats of each org within 90 days. Couldn't help it. And if it was really applied in a business-like fashion, and n.o.body messed it up in any way, shape, or form . . . we might even be able to take the planet within a year. It is hot! Scientology is so much hotter than anybody thinks it is . . . it is fantastic!

-L. RON HUBBARD, "WELCOME TO CLa.s.s VII," 1968.

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

Finding a job designing posters and other promotional material for an organization in Los Angeles, Jeff moved to the Sierra Madre Canyon, an eclectic artists' refuge nestled in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. Just a half-hour drive northeast from downtown L.A., the Canyon was home to hundreds of longhaired kids who'd migrated there during the mid-1960s-Jeff believed it to be one of the largest hippie outposts in the country after Haight-Ashbury. With its quirky bungalows and wooden footbridges, it was a rustic idyll and sanctuary for the drifters and dropouts of the greater Los Angeles area, and many more who'd come to party with their friends on the weekends.

But Jeff was bored. He was searching for something; he didn't know what. The Summer of Love had come and gone, along with its haze of promise. The war in Vietnam continued to kill thousands of young Americans. Many who made it back alive wore the dead-eyed stares of the walking wounded. Active in the anti-war movement, Jeff was haunted by the memory of one large demonstration outside the Los Angeles Convention Center, where he'd seen a twelve-year-old girl beaten up by the Los Angeles police. Drugs, Jeff knew, weren't the answer-a bad acid trip a few months earlier had cured him of that interest. He spent most of his spare time poring over books on meditation, yoga, cybernetics, hypnosis.

One Sunday afternoon in the fall of 1967, Jeff's roommate, Jerry Day, arrived home in a state of high fl.u.s.ter. "Wait until you hear about this," Jerry said, breathlessly.

Jeff yawned. "Hear about what?" he said.

"Scientology!" Jerry said.

"What's Scientology?"

Jerry took a deep breath and began to explain that he'd just met some guys, Scientologists from L.A., who'd been talking about a new "scientific form of spiritual enlightenment." They all seemed really into it-like really, Jerry said. They talked of Scientology as if it was a magical science that could help you-somehow-somehow-become a superman. Plus, there was some kind of past-life component that sounded really cool. "Don't you want to check it out?" Jerry asked.

Science, spiritual enlightenment, past lives-they all fit into Jeff's intellectual purview. "Sure, bring it on," he said. Later he would laugh at the memory. "We were all pretty crazy hippies back then," Jeff, now living in Portland, Oregon, told me not long ago. "We were pretty much up for anything."

The next night, Jeff and Jerry drove out of the Canyon and went down to Scientology's Los Angeles headquarters, the "Scientology Place," as they called it, which was located in a rambling Spanish-style house on Ninth Street, near MacArthur Park. A crowd of maybe one hundred or more had gathered around a fountain on the front lawn; others were packed into the lobby. They were of different ages and, to Jeff's great surprise, they were talking to one another-graying, middle-aged parents standing side by side with longhaired hippies, laughing, discussing philosophy, trading jokes, as if the generation gap had been closed.

A few minutes later, everyone filed into a lecture hall. Jerry and Jeff found seats near the back. At the front, a handsome young man with dark hair walked up to the lectern. A hush fell over the room. The young man could have been a movie star; he was that good-looking, Jeff thought. He also had an intense, unwavering stare that seemed to penetrate right through a person. And he was an electrifying speaker, presenting Scientology as a lifesaving new philosophy that freed the mind and the spirit. Even war, he said, could be prevented with the correct application of Scientology's principles.

About halfway through the lecture, the young man stopped to show a film that featured an interview with Scientology's founder, L. Ron Hubbard. Here was the same smiling, fatherly-looking man whom Jeff had seen depicted on posters that were plastered everywhere in the building; a large portrait of Hubbard also hung in the lobby. He looked nearly sixty, but Jeff thought he had a puckish mien. He wore a jaunty ascot, and his presentation was irreverent, even wildly anti-establishment. He seemed to speak the language of youth, not that of his own dusty generation. And, Jeff noted, he was not a member of some austere academic or philosophical establishment; he didn't even have a degree!* Instead, his resume listed his various exploits as an explorer, sailor, expedition leader, anthropologist, author, and all-around maverick. He was known as Ron.

After the film, the lecturer picked up where he had left off, explaining some core principles of Scientology. Society's reactive mind, he said, was to blame for all that was wrong in the world: the H-bomb, the Vietnam War, the plague of overpopulation and disease. When humans become free of the reactive mind and reach the state of Clear, they become smarter, saner, more dynamic, more alive. Surely, Jeff thought, this young speaker possessed those traits himself. And indeed, he said, "I'm Clear," and fixed every member of the audience with his magnetic gaze. "You can be too."

"I was hooked," said Jeff.

And so Jeff Hawkins, a shy, somewhat awkward young man usually dressed in jeans, sandals, a blue work shirt, and tinted granny gla.s.ses, got into Scientology, as did his friend Jerry and thousands of other young people all across the United States. For those like Jeff, who were smart, curious, and searching, Scientology provided its own form of rebellion, which was perfectly timed, as it turned out.

Had the sixties never happened-which is to say, had a tremendous number of young people not become convinced of the moral and spiritual bankruptcy of their parents, the church, the Republican Party, and other people and inst.i.tutions collectively known as the establishment-Scientology might have gone the way of other fringe movements and died a quiet death. Instead, repositioned as a mystical quest rather than an alternative mental health therapy or religious movement, Scientology rode the countercultural wave, and by the late 1960s, a whole new generation of spiritual seekers had caught on to the renegade vision of L. Ron Hubbard.

"Wherever you go," wrote the journalist George Malko in his 1970 book Scientology: The Now Religion, "the Scientology word is being shouted at you from Day-Glo posters showing an exultantly leaping man, his very vibrancy dividing his body into a discord of parallel striations." STEP INTO THE WORLD OF THE TOTALLY FREE, declared the posters, tacked to the walls of New York City subway stations. On campuses, Scientology was marketed as a movement for Flower Children. One church official in New York, Bob Thomas, described Scientology to Malko as a "drugless psychedelic" that offered young people a community and a new brand of hope.

"After drugs comes Scientology," said one series of church fliers posted in public urinals around the University of California, Berkeley. Other leaflets, handed out widely on street corners, urged young people to "be a member of Scientology. The world has waited thousands of years for a technology to change conditions for the better. Scientology is the answer."

In Kenmore Square or Washington Square, on Shattuck Avenue or Sunset Boulevard, in the Haight or Golden Gate Park, pretty young girls dressed in hot pants or mini-skirts, smiling radiantly as if they'd discovered a secret they were bursting to share, would approach young, mostly male college students or hippies and invite them to come with them. And, like lemmings, men would follow, said Nancy Many, who worked for the Scientology organization in Boston. It was unwritten policy that the church would deploy its most attractive staff to recruit people off the street. "No one had any idea where they were being taken," she said, chuckling, "but these girls were gorgeous and so the guys would go."

The girls would take the boys-or, alternately, though less frequently, a handsome young man might take a group of girls-to the local church of Scientology, which in those days was usually housed in a storefront or rundown office building, or, like the Los Angeles Org, in an old house. There, these potential recruits-"raw meat," as they were called-were delivered to someone like Many, who would seat them in a large auditorium with dozens, and at times hundreds, of other people, for an introductory lecture. By then, whoever had brought them in would have vanished back out onto the street to round up more prospects. Some of the new arrivals, detecting the bait and switch, would leave; others, intrigued, stayed.

The lectures could take various directions. Some, like the one Jeff and Jerry attended, were straightforward: an explanation of the reactive mind, a film, an invitation to become Clear. There was also the lecture-confessional. "I used to be a failure," the lecturer might begin. "I was a terrible father, a terrible husband, I was unhappy with my church, I had a dead-end job. And then I discovered Scientology."

"Beautiful," someone in the back of the room would murmur. Frequently it was another pretty girl. She was not, however, an audience member, but rather a Scientologist installed there to set the right tone. The lecturer would go on to describe how incredibly, magically mind-blowing the experience of auditing had been; how he'd discovered a "new reality" based on "affinity" and communication. "Reality is agreement," he might explain, adding that Scientology meant "the study of truth" and that a key principle was to know "what's true for you." He had found his truth, and he was so sure this was the truth that after just a short time in Scientology, he'd left his wife, quit his job, and was now working full-time at the church. And now he wanted everyone in the audience to immediately find a registrar (that is, a church salesperson) and do as he had: join the Church of Scientology and "step into the exciting world of the totally free."

"That was our job," Many, a perky, dark-haired woman in her fifties, told me. She left Scientology in 1997 and now lives with her husband, Chris, in the San Fernando Valley. She had been a girl of nineteen when she joined the church in Boston and was soon charged with delivering some of the lectures to an audience that frequently seemed confused. "There would be all these college kids in there, and they'd look around as if to say, 'Where'd that chick go who brought us here? Where's the chick?'" Many laughed. "She was out doing her job, bringing in tons of people. Our job was to get them interested enough to go to a registrar, who would then sell them. But if we weren't getting them to the registrar, we got in trouble. You had to sell them something-even if it was just a book."

Selling religion was by no means unique to Scientology. The Hare Krishnas sold copies of the Bhagavad Gita; the followers of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon and his Unification Church sold flowers at airports as a way of meeting naive and impressionable young people. More recently, the Kabbalah Centre, which promotes a self-help-inspired form of Jewish mysticism that became popular in the late 1990s, has made handsome profits selling candles and beaded bracelets at such high-end retail establishments as Barneys New York. But Scientology had a cooler, more mainstream appeal. "I never thought I was joining a religion," said Many, who was raised a Catholic. It was like yoga, in terms of its faddish popularity, but it was better than fuzzy Eastern philosophy: less "foreign," more fun. There was no dancing, chanting, or wearing of orange robes. No one was encouraged to abstain from s.e.x, cigarettes, or alcohol, let alone shave their head. There was also no requirement to relinquish worldly possessions (nor to hand anything over to a guru).

Just as Mia Farrow and the Beatles embraced Transcendental Meditation, Scientology gained its own celebrity following: in the 1960s, Leonard Cohen, Ca.s.s Elliot, William'S. Burroughs, and even Jim Morrison ("Jim?!?" some kids asked, and this rumor, which remains just a rumor, always seemed a bit too good to be true) were said to have dabbled in Scientology. Of the church's processes, Burroughs, who'd made it all the way to Clear, once said, "Scientology can do more in ten hours than psychoa.n.a.lysis can do in ten years."*