| | Ed Thompson:
Scientology’s so-called “Purification Rundown” consists of taking very long hot saunas after having ingested high doses of niacin (as well as other vitamins). Niacin dilates the capillaries causing one to flush; the idea is to sweat out all toxins and drugs. There is little or no medical supervision during the “rundown” and there have been cases of extreme sickness caused by it.
It’s not a good idea to get into a sauna, flush with niacin, with a door that can be locked or guarded by a True Believing Scieno (often called “Clams” by those who criticize the cult). Still, those who have gone through (and come through) the Purification Rundown claim that it has changed their life for the better: they’re ready for more courses, such as the Communication Course, in which you partner up with someone and stare at him or her for extended periods of time, trying to cause a “flinch” or a disruption in concentration. From there, you’re ready for a series of courses known as the “Upper Indocs” (for “indoctrination”). All of this will cost you big bucks. Additionally, you will be pressured into revealing personal information – the more embarrassing, the better – to a personal counselor in a one-on-one session known as “auditing.” Your revelations are written down, and a file, or dossier, will be kept on you. That’s how the organization keeps people in line: it merely threatens to reveal what you told the auditor should you decide to criticize it publicly. It’s really a private intelligence organization, that also strong-arms its enemies when it deems it necessary. Anarcho-capitalists might find such a private intelligence organization instructive vis-à-vis their notions of governments-for-hire in the private sector.
The responses one gives in the auditing session are checked for truthfulness by a lie detector, evasively called an “E-Meter”, which measures slight voltage changes across the surface of your skin. According to Scieno-lore, the E-Meter measures the amount of “Thetan” energy you possess. “Thetan” comes from the Greek letter “Theta”, which is used in many Greek words denoting “spirit” or “God”. So in Scieno-speak, a “thetan” is a sort of neutral way of saying “soul” or “spirit.” If you watch the episode of Southpark that Teresa linked to, you’ll see the cosmogony of Scientology: the evil galactic warlord Xenu disposed of inhabitants on his planet by transporting them to planet Earth and dropping them, en masse, into volcanoes (that’s the reason that the volcano is on the cover of the book “Dianetics”). Their “thetans” ascended and were then sucked into, ah, “soul-sucking machines” (Hoover? whatever) and forced to watch confusing imagery: Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, etc. So all these “thetans” were now both confused and bodiless. When mankind appeared, these thetans attached themselves to their bodies – now referred to by Scienos as “body thetans” or "BTs" – causing the human (and his offspring) also to be confused. Minus the pulp science fiction part, it bears an uncanny resemblance to medieval demonism. The purpose of Dianetic counseling, therefore, becomes one of exorcism. All of this is carefully revealed to members in a special, closed-session course known as OT3. The OT stands for “Operating Thetan”.
If it weren’t for a bunch of disgruntled former members – and a little invention known as the Internet – this stuff would be still be secret. Now, everyone knows about it.
You have to understand that nothing in Scientology is what it seems. The organization has two parts: “Dianetics” (which is the psychology and mental health arm, and which uses “auditing” and "E-meters" as a way to build a dossier on members), and “Scientology” which calls itself a “religious philosophy” or better yet, a "spiritual technology" (known in newspeak as "The Tech"). Originally, people were brought into the latter by way of the former. The prize – the destination at the end of the “Bridge To Total Freedom” – is the touted ability to be a pure “OT" or "Operating Thetan”: to remove your mind from your body, cause things to move around, send out "intention beams" from your head and make people do your bidding, etc. Much of the “remote viewing” nonsense was done by Scientologists, or those influenced by Scientology (such as the laser physicist Hal Puthoff).
Hubbard saw himself as the heir to a mystic Masonic order run for many years by a hippie-from-Cambridge-University named Aleister Crowley. The order was called the O.T.O., or “Ordo Templi Orientis”, Latin for “Order of the Rising Temple.” “O.T.” may actually be derived from O.T.O.
Hubbard was, for many years, a down and out writer of bad pulp fiction (I find his prose simply unreadable) who was paid “a penny a word”, as were other pulp fiction writers of the day. According to Isaac Asimov’s autobiography, there was a convention of science fiction writers (late 1940s, I believe), during which Lafayette Ronald Hubbard got on the podium and said (paraphrasing): “Gentlemen: you’ll never get rich by writing. The real money in the United States is in religion. Start your own religion and you can be billionaires.” Asimov thought he was kidding. Yet by the 1960s, the new religion of Scientology was easily worth over a billion dollars.
Hubbard took an early therapy developed by Freud, in which the patient was put into a light hypnotic trance and asked certain “key” questions in an effort to “bring to complete consciousness” some repressed thought from the past. Freud abandoned the practice: he discovered that just because someone was made aware of a repressed thought or feeling in no way guaranteed that he or she wouldn’t continue to be neurotic in some way. So Freud got sidetracked into other things: dream analysis, etc. Hubbard picked up on this therapy, added some nomenclature from a fashionable philosopher of the 1930s/40s named Alfred Korzybski, added the notion of the “engram” (the psychological analogue of the rotten spot on an apple caused by a past hurt) and – just like Ray Kroc – had the keen business sense to franchise the therapy out by publishing his book “Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health.” Scienos claim that “Dianetics” comes from “Dia” (through), and “netic” (from “nous”, meaning “mind”). The truth is stranger: “Dianetics” comes from “Diana” + “etics”: the practice or exercise of Diana, the Greek goddess of witchcraft and trance.
Anyway, the book was a bestseller, as everyone was cashing in on the “Mental Health Movement” of the 1950s, and little "self-help" Dianetics Clubs began to spring up everywhere.
Hubbard realized he was sitting on a goldmine: if he could draw people into a larger organization, based on enthusiasm for “self-discovery” via Dianetics, he could charge lots of money, and – just as important to Hubbard – control them. The structure of Scientology is based pretty clearly on that of the Masonic Lodge: there are courses one must take and “levels” – such as “OT 8” – one can strive for (while in Masonry, there are “degrees” – “Third Degree Mason,” etc.) – and the course content is based very much on the writings of mystic Aleister Crowley. The Scientology symbol – two interlocked triangles with an “S” weaving through them – comes right out of Crowley’s OTO: The upper triangle represents “Will”; the lower, “Love”. The two symbolize Crowley’s quasi-Nietzchean declaration: “Do what thou wilt. Love is the Way; Love under Will.” (Hubbard took the triangles and tilted them – not too sure what THAT’s supposed to mean. However, the interlocked triangles can be found quite readily in Crowley’s works.)
The purpose of Dianetics is to draw people into Scientology. The purpose of Scientology is to get people’s money and to control what they think. A person’s entire vocabulary is replaced by that of Scientology: the set of beliefs is referred to as “The Tech”, short for “spiritual technology”; missions are called “orgs”; perceived enemies, or suppressive persons, are called “SPs”; those not yet in the cult are called “Wogs” (from the old Brit term for Asians living in England: “Western Oriental Gentleman”); signing people up for “free personality tests” on the street is referred to as “Body Reg’ing” (probably from “Registering Bodies”); someone who has successfully erased his or her engrams by means of faithfully applying Dianetics is said to be “Clear”; those still suffering from engrams, but in the fold, are called “Pre-Clears”; etc. It’s very Orwellian. If you commit an infraction of the cult’s rules of behavior, it’s called an “Overt.” If you lie about it, it’s called a “Withhold.” If you succeed at something (anything) and believe it is because of a correct application of Scientology, it’s referred to as a “Win”, and members are expected to speak about “the big Win they had this week by applying Scientology.” “Tell us about your Win this week!”
The monastic order of Scientology is called the “Sea Org”; the lucky bastards get to wear faux naval uniforms with faux medals. Since Scientology insists on the reality and the knowledge of reincarnation, Sea Org enlistees are required to sign an “employment” contract for a billion years (because their motto is “We Come Back”), as well as turn over their entire personal bank accounts to the Church. The Sea Org was actually started when Hubbard took a powder from the long arm of the law, being an “un-indicted co-conspirator” in a case that had to do with breaking into the IRS and stealing records(!). A lot of counter-culture people at the time sort of admired them for doing that. Nevertheless, Hubbard escaped on a yacht and his first wife, Susan Northrup, took the wrap, along with several others.
Jim Henshaw:
All excellent questions; none easy to answer. I think a difference can be drawn between a religion and a philosophy: a religion usually admits a Creator. That’s the reason that many do not regard Buddhism as a true religion, but rather a “philosophy for living.” A “cult”, however, can cross the line between philosophy and religion. There are philosophical cults; there are religious cults. There are “personality cults” (“Method Acting” teachers like Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler fall into this category)
I think that one of the characteristics of a true cult is its sense, not only of exclusiveness, but of its intolerance to a member's communicating or associating with those outside the fold. Scientology has the practice of “Disconnection”, in which a member is made to declare that his or her family members and friends are “Suppressive Persons” and must cease all communication with them.
Part of the idea of a “cult” as opposed to a traditional notion of “religion” is that the former usually has a pre-fabricated nomenclature that is unique to it – it may take ordinary words and use them in idiosyncratic ways, first as a shibboleth (one who speaks it is marked as an “insider”), and also as an Orwellian technique of “newspeak”: a replacement of ordinary language in order to short-circuit a member’s critical thinking faculties. Hubbard loved to invent and use words that don’t exist in the dictionary, such as “enturbulate” which apparently means simply “disturb emotionally”, but it adds to the pseudo-scientific gloss of the Church to use a very high-tech sounding word. I don’t see this as occurring in traditional religions like Judaism, Christianity, or even Islam, as odious as their fundamentalist varieties are.
There used to be an organization called the “Cult Awareness Network” that would help de-program people who had gotten ensnared by various cults. On “CAN’s” website, they began to list Scientology as NOT being a cult…it turns out that CAN had been bought out, lock-stock-and-barrel, by the Church of Scientology, which was using it as a propaganda tool to promote itself as just another religion.
The Church of Scientology also has people who, like informers or secret police, will call and harass you on the phone (or in person, if need be) if they get word that you are criticizing Scientology publicly.
There’s an amusing short novel (though a very badly written one) by Gore Vidal titled “Messiah”, which is about a Scientology-like cult started by a character named John Cave – the cult is known as “Cavesway”. We find out later that the cult is simply a suicide cult. The main character, who is also the first-person narrator, has to hide in one of the Islamic countries, pretending to be a convert to Islam, because only the Islamic countries are intolerant enough of other religions to resist the temptation of “Cavesway”, which has taken over the rest of the world.
The irrationality and the social control that is Scientology is already here; that of Levin’s “This Perfect Day” resides only in his novel. Scientologists no doubt disapprove of the ugly vision presented in that story because it competes with the ugly vision they already have in mind for the rest of us, and to some extent, have already achieved.
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