The achromatic little city-limits breadth of Clearwater, Florida, has a adorableness salon, a pizza parlor and one or two abandoned bars, as able-bodied as a agglomeration of addle bungalows and some old storefronts that attending as if they haven't apparent barter in years. There are few cars and about no pedestrians. There are, however, buses - a agile of aflame white and dejected ones that boring clamber through town, endlessly at approved intervals to acquittal a baby army of deeply organized, young, about abandoned white men and women, all clad in compatible preppy attire: khaki, atramentous or navy-blue trousers and brittle white, dejected or chicken dress shirts. Some abrasion pagers on their belts; others backpack brief-cases. The men accept abbreviate hair, and the women accumulate endemic pulled aback or tucked beneath headbands that bout their outfits. No one crosses adjoin the light, and everybody calls everybody abroad "sir" - even if the "sir" is a woman. They move throughout the centermost of Clearwater in bound clusters, from bend to corner, architecture to building.
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This regimented accumulation represents the "Sea Organization," the a lot of committed and aristocratic associates of the Abbey of Scientology. For the accomplished thirty years, Scientology has fabricated the city-limits of Clearwater its accepted airy abode - its Mecca, or its Temple Square. There are 8,300 or so Scientologists alive and alive in Clearwater - added than in any added city-limits in the apple alfresco of Los Angeles. Scientologists own added than 200 businesses in Clearwater. Associates of the abbey run schools and clandestine apprenticeship programs, day-care centers and a drug-rehab clinic. They sit on the boards of the Rotary Club, the Chamber of Commerce and the Boy Scouts.
This commodity appeared in the March 9, 2006 affair of Rolling Stone. The affair is attainable in the online archive.
In July 2004, The St. Petersburg Times dubbed Clearwater, a association of 108,000 people, "Scientology's Town," On the newspaper's foreground page was a photograph of Scientology's newest building, a vast, white, Mediterranean Revival-style architecture accepted aural Scientology circles as the "Super Power" building. Occupying a abounding aboveboard block of downtown, this structure, which has been beneath architecture aback 1998, is billed as the abandoned bigger Scientology abbey in the world. If it is assuredly completed - apparently in backward 2006, at an estimated final bulk of $50 amateur - it will accept 889 accommodation on six floors, an calm carve garden and a ample Scientology museum. The consummate blow will be a two-story, aflame Scientology cantankerous that, perched aloft the building's accomplished tower, will flash over the city-limits of Clearwater like a beacon.
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Scientology - the appellation agency "the abstraction of truth," in the words of its architect and airy messiah, the backward science-fiction biographer L. Ron Hubbard-calls itself "the world's fastest-growing religion." Built-in in 1954, the accumulation now claims 10 amateur associates in 159 countries and added than 6,000 Scientology churches, missions and beat groups above the globe. Its holdings, which awning complete acreage on several continents, are broadly affected to bulk in the billions of dollars. Its missionaries - accepted as "volunteer ministers" - yield allotment in "cavalcades' throughout the developing apple and accept been found, en masse, at the website of disasters alignment from 9/11 to the Asian tsunami to Hurricane Katrina. Aural the acreage of allusive religions, some academics see Scientology as one of the accept to cogent new religious movements of the accomplished century.
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Scientology is aswell America's a lot of arguable religion: broadly derided, but little understood. It is abiding in elements of Buddhism, Hinduism and a bulk of Western philosophies, including aspects of Christianity. The French sociologist Regis Dericquebourg, an able in allusive religions, explains Scientology's acceptance arrangement as one of "regressive utopia," in which man seeks to acknowledgment to a once-perfect accompaniment through a array of meticulous, and rigorous, processes advised to put him in blow with his basal spirit. These processes are awful controlled, and, at the avant-garde levels, awful secretive. Critics of the abbey point out that Scientology, altered a allotment of religions, withholds key aspects of its axial canon from all but its a lot of astral followers. To those in the mainstream, this would be affiliated to the Catholic Abbey abnegation to acquaint all but a baddest bulk of the affectionate that Jesus Christ died for their sins.
In June of abide year, I set out to ascertain Scientology, an adventure that would yield about nine months. A bankrupt acceptance that has about been adverse to journalistic inquiry, the abbey initially offered no advice on this story; a lot of of my assay was done afterwards its abetment and circuitous dozens of interviews with both accepted and above Scientologists, as able-bodied as bookish advisers who accept advised the group, Ultimately, however, the abbey absitively to co-operate and gave me aberrant admission to its officials, amusing programs and key religious headquarters. What I activate was a acceptance that is at already boilerplate and bordering - a religious association accepted for its Hollywood associates but run by a uniformed affected of believers who rarely, if ever, arise in the attainable eye. It is an abandoned association - one that exists, to a ample degree, as something of a alongside cosmos to the civil world, with its own classification and ethical code, and, a lot of alarming to those who breach its rules, its own anxiously activated apology system.
Scientologists, abundant like Mormons or Christian evangelicals, accede themselves to be on a mission. They frequently allege of "helping people," and this mission is fatigued in a bulk of abbey testaments. "Scientologists see themselves as possessors of doctrines and abilities that can save the world, if not the galaxy." says Stephen Kent, a abettor of folklore at the University of Alberta, in Canada, who has abundantly advised the group.
Church admiral avowal that Scientology has developed added in the accomplished 5 years than in the antecedent fifty. Some evidence, however, suggests otherwise. In 2001, a assay conducted by the City-limits University of New York activate abandoned 55,000 humans in the United States who claimed to be Scientologists. Worldwide, some assemblage accept a reasonable appraisal of Scientology's bulk practicing associates ranges amid 100,000 and 200,000, mostly in the U.S., Europe, South Africa and Australia. According to the church's own course-completion lists - abounding of which are attainable in a abbey advertisement and on the Internet - abandoned 6,126 humans alive up for religious casework at the Clearwater alignment in 2004, down from a aiguille of 11,210 in 1989. According to Kristi Wachter, a San Francisco activist who maintains an online database adherent to Scientology's numbers, this arrangement is replicated at about all of Scientology's key organizations and churches. To some observers, this suggests that Scientology may, in fact, be shrinking.
But acute what is accurate about the Abbey of Scientology is no simple task. Tax-exempt aback 1993 (status accepted by the IRS afterwards a connected acknowledged battle), Scientology releases no advice about its associates or its finances. Nor does it acceptable assay of its writings or practices. The abbey has a acclaimed acceptability for squelching its critics through litigation, and according to some reports, browbeating (a affection that may explain why the creators of South Park jokingly attributed every acclaim on its November 2005 sendup of Scientology to the fabulous John and Jane Smith; Paramount, reportedly beneath pressure, has agreed not to answer the adventure actuality or to air it in England). Nevertheless, Scientology's critics comprise a ample arrangement of ex-members (or "apostates," in abbey parlance), academics and complete free-speech and human-rights activists like Wachter, who accept declared war on the accumulation by announcement a cogent bulk of ahead conflicting advice on the Internet. This includes scans of arguable memos, photographs and acknowledged briefs, as able-bodied as testimonials from disillusioned above members, including some baronial associates of its Sea Organization. All acrylic the abbey in a negative, even abusive, light.
When asked what, if anything, acquaint by the apostates is true, Mike Rinder, the fifty-year-old administrator of the Abbey of Scientology International's acknowledged and public-relations wing, accepted as the Appointment of Appropriate Affairs, says bluntly, "It's all bullshit, appealing much."
But he admits that Scientology has been on a advance to accession its attainable profile. Added than 23 amateur humans visited the Scientology Web website abide year, says Rinder, one of the astral admiral in the church. In addition, the abbey claims that Scientology accustomed 289,000 account of radio and TV advantage in 2005, abounding of them adherent to the accomplishments of Tom Cruise, the a lot of acclaimed Scientologist in the world, who spent abundant of the bounce and summer of 2005 announcement Scientology and its behavior to interviewers alignment from Oprah Winfrey to Matt Lauer.
Shortly afterwards Rolling Rock absitively to commence on this story, Cruise alleged our offices to say that he would not participate. Several weeks later, the annual was visited by Cruise's sister, Lee Anne DeVette, an upper-level Scientologist who until afresh aswell served as Cruise's publicist, forth with Mike Rinder. Both bidding their annoyance with antecedent advantage of Scientology by above media outlets, and they warned adjoin what they perceived to be the blunder of the faith's critics - "the wackos," as Rinder declared them. He afresh access Rolling Rock to Los Angeles to appearance us "the complete Scientology" - a cruise that took 5 months to set up.
A bulk of humans who accept appear for the purposes of this commodity accept done so for the complete aboriginal time. Several, in speaking of their lives spent in the church, requested that their identities be adequate through the change of names and added characteristics. Others insisted that not even a gender be captivated to their comments.
There will consistently be schisms in any religious group, as able-bodied as humans who, aloft abrogation their faith, adjudge to "purge" themselves of their experiences. This is decidedly accurate in the case of associates of alleged new religions, which about abode complete allegation from their members. Scientology is one of these religions. "We're not arena some accessory bold in Scientology," Hubbard wrote in a action cardboard blue-blooded "Keeping Scientology Working," which is appropriate account for every member. "The accomplished aching approaching of this planet, every man, woman and adolescent on it, and your own afterlife for the next amaranthine trillions of years depend on what you do actuality and now with and in Scientology. This is a baleful austere activity."
It is absurd to go anywhere in city-limits Clearwater afterwards accepting watched by aegis cameras. There are about 100 of them, set up on all of Scientology's properties, which awning several hotels, a above coffer and a bulk of authoritative buildings. Cameras face in, adjoin the barrio themselves, as able-bodied as out at the street.
While some adeptness acquisition this disconcerting, Natalie Walet, 17, thinks it's normal. "It's just a point of security," she says over coffee one atramentous at the city-limits Starbucks. She addendum that Scientology's barrio accept been bedfast with graffiti and are commonly picketed, which she sees as a assurance of religious bigotry. "You accept a abbey that a lot of humans don't like, and some humans are assholes," she says. That said, Natalie adds, a lot of humans in Clearwater accept "very top standards and behavior - they're ethical people."
A appealing babe with a connected atramentous ponytail, Natalie was built-in and aloft in Scientology. Both of her parents and her grandmother are abbey members, and her captivation in Scientology centers about Clearwater. But the abbey has added extensive hubs, including the authoritative abode in Los Angeles, home to the able Abbey of Scientology International; and Freewinds, the 440-foot cruise abode that docks in Curaçao and is acclimated as a training facility, affair anteroom and vacation destination for aristocratic Scientologists, including Cruise and John Travolta. There is aswell "Gold Base," the complete arid admixture accommodation the Religious Technology Center, or RTC, the banking hub of the church, amid about eighty afar southeast of Los Angeles, home to David Miscavige, the absorbing forty-five-year-old who alive up the all-embracing church.
Natalie's accustomed absoluteness is one of complete captivation in all things Hubbard. Scientology kids are aloft in a complete altered abode than boilerplate kids. A lot of of them, like Natalie, accept been accomplished by appropriate tutors, and enrolled, as Natalie was if she was younger, in clandestine schools run by Scientologists that use a Hubbard-approved abstraction technique. A lot of kids are aswell put "on course" - enrolled in classes at the abbey that advise both accouchement and adults self-control, focus and advice skills. Natalie was put on course, aloft her own insistence, if she was seven or eight years old. Amid academy and church, activity was "kind of a bubble," she says.
It is a mild night, and Natalie is dressed in a sleeveless atramentous Empire-waist blouse and bound jeans; her short, blah nails are corrective red. She lights a Marlboro Menthol. Smoking is Natalie's abandoned vice. She neither drinks nor takes drugs of any array - "once in a admirable while I'll yield a Tylenol," she says. "But abandoned if my cephalalgia is actually bad." She admits this with embarrassment because Scientologists accede abounding illnesses to be cerebral and don't accept in alleviative them with medicine, even aspirin.
Like all Scientologists, Natalie considers her physique to be artlessly a acting vessel. She thinks of herself as an abiding being, or "thetan," which agency that she has lived trillions of years, and will abide to be reborn, afresh and again. Abounding Eastern religions accept agnate beliefs, and Natalic is quick to agenda that Scientology is "actually a complete basal religion. It has a lot of the aforementioned moral behavior as others." What's appropriate about Scientology, Natalie says, is that it "bears a applicable activated technology that you can use in your accustomed life."
"Technology," or "tech," is what Scientologists alarm the theories, methods and advance consort by L. Ron Hubbard - "LRH," as Natalie calls him. To the devout, he is allotment prophet, allotment teacher, allotment savior - some Scientologists rank Hubbard's accent as greater than Christ's - and Hubbard's babble is advised the word. Hubbard was a abounding biographer all his life; there are millions of words accustomed to him, about a quarter-million of them complete aural Dianetics, the acknowledged quasiscientific self-help book that is the a lot of acclaimed Scientology text.
Published in 1950, Dianetics maintained that the antecedent of brainy and concrete affliction could be traced aback to analytic scars alleged "engrams" that were abiding in early, even prenatal, experiences, and remained bound in a person's subconscious, or "reactive mind." To rid oneself of the acknowledging mind, a action accepted as traveling "Clear," Dianetics, and afterwards Scientology, preached a regressive-therapy abode alleged auditing, which involves re-experiencing incidents in one's accomplished activity in adjustment to abolish their engrams.
Natalie is a fan of auditing, something she's been accomplishing aback she was a baby child. A lot of auditing is done with a accessory alleged the electropsychometer, or E-meter. About compared to lie detectors, E-meters admeasurement the changes in baby electrical currents in the body, in acknowledgment to questions airish by an auditor. Scientologists accept the beat registers thoughts of the acknowledging apperception and can basis out benumbed lies. As Natalie explains it, the E-meter is "like a adviser that helps the accountant to apperceive what questions to ask." Sometimes, she says, you adeptness not bethink assertive events, and you adeptness not apperceive what is causing your problems. "But they'll just dig it up until you go, 'Holy shit, was that what was traveling on?'" She smiles. "And afterward, you feel so abundant better."
Natalie has just amorphous her aisle to Scientology enlightenment, accepted as the Bridge to Complete Freedom. There are specific stages, or "grades," of the Bridge, and the key to avant-garde "upward" is auditing: hundreds, if not thousands, of sessions that Scientologists accept can not abandoned advice them boldness their problems but aswell fix their ethical breaches, abundant as Catholics adeptness do in confessing their sins. The ultimate ambition in every auditing affair is to accept a "win," or moment of revelation, which can yield a few minutes, hours or even weeks - Scientologists are not accustomed to leave an auditing affair until their accountant is satisfied.
So far, Natalie has gotten abundant of her auditing for free, through her parents, who accept both formed for the church. But abounding Scientologists pay dearly for the service. Altered a allotment of religious faiths, Scientology accuse for about all of its religious services. Auditing is purchased in 12.5-hour blocks, accepted as "intensives." Anniversary accelerated can bulk anywhere from $750 for anterior sessions to amid $8,000 and $9,000 for avant-garde sessions. If asked about money, abbey admiral can become defensive. "Do you wish to apperceive the complete answer? If we could action aggregate for free, we would do it," says Rinder. Addition official offers, "We don't accept 2,000 years of acquired abundance to abatement aback on." But Scientology isn't alone, abbey leaders insist. Mormons, for example, apprehend associates to assessment a tenth of their earnings.
Still, religious advisers agenda that this is an untraditional approach. "Among the things that accept fabricated this movement so controversial," says S. Scott Bartchy, administrator of the Centermost for the Abstraction of Adoration at UCLA, "are its claims that its forms of analysis are 'scientific' and that the 'truth' will abandoned be appear to those who accept the money to acquirement advance to the assorted levels arch to 'being clear.' It is this bare abode for money that has led abounding assemblage to admonish that the complete operation looks added like a business than a religion." Clearing the stages forth the Bridge to Complete Freedom is a action that can yield years and bulk tens and about hundreds of bags of dollars-one adept Scientologist told me she "donated" $250,000 in a twenty-year period. Added Scientologists can wind up spending ancestors inheritances and mortgaging homes to pay the fees. Many, like Natalie's parents, plan for their bounded abbey so they can accept auditing and courses for free.
Both of Natalie's parents are Clear, she says. Her grandmother is what's alleged an "Operating Thetan," or "OT." So is Tom Cruise, who is abreast the top of Scientology's Bridge, at a akin accepted as OT VII. OTs are Scientology's aristocratic - acquainted beings who are said to accept complete "control" over themselves and their environment. OTs can allegedly move azoic altar with their minds, leave their bodies at will and telepathically acquaint with, and ascendancy the behavior of, both animals and animal beings. At the accomplished levels, they are allegedly absolved from the concrete universe, to the point area they can psychically ascendancy what Scientologists alarm MEST: Matter, Energy, Amplitude and Time.
The a lot of important, and awful anticipated, of the eight "OT levels" is OT III, aswell accepted as the Wall of Fire. It is actuality that Scientologists are told the secrets of the universe, and, some believe, the conception adventure abaft the complete religion. It is adeptness so dangerous, they are told, any Scientologist acquirements this complete afore he is attainable could die. If I ask Mike Rinder about this, he casts the admonishing in less-dire terms, answer that, afore he accomplished OT III - he is now OT V - he was told that searching at the complete aboriginal was "spiritually not acceptable for you." But Hubbard, who told followers that he apparent these secrets while on a cruise to North Africa in 1967, was added dramatic. "Somehow or added I brought it off, and acquired the complete and was able to reside through it." he wrote. "I am complete abiding that I was the aboriginal one that anytime did reside through any advance to attain that material."
Scientologists accept to be "invited" to do OT III. Beforehand, they are put through an accelerated auditing action to verify that they are ready. They assurance a abandonment able never to acknowledge the secrets of OT III, nor to ascendancy Scientology amenable for any agony or accident one adeptness abide at this date of auditing. Finally, they are accustomed a manila folder, which they accept to apprehend in a private, bound room.
These materials, which the Abbey of Scientology has connected struggled to accumulate secret, were appear online by a above affiliate in 1995 and accept been broadly broadcast in the boilerplate media, alignment from The New York Times to abide year's South Park episode. They advance that 75 amateur years ago, an angry galactic warlord alleged Xenu controlled seventy-six planets in this bend of the galaxy, anniversary of which was acutely overpopulated. To breach this problem, Xenu angled up 13.5 abundance beings and afresh flew them to Earth, area they were dumped into volcanoes about the apple and vaporized with bombs. This broadcast their radioactive souls, or thetans, until they were bent in cyberbanking accessories set up about the atmosphere and "implanted" with a bulk of apocryphal account - including the concepts of God, Christ and organized religion. Scientologists afterwards amateur that abounding of these entities captivated themselves to animal beings, area they abide to this day, creating not just the basis of all of our affecting and concrete problems but the basis of all problems of the avant-garde world.
"Hubbard anticipation it was important to accept a adventure about how things got going, agnate to the way both Jews and Christians did in the aboriginal capacity of Genesis," says UCLA's Bartchy. "All adoration lives from the faculty either that something in activity is awfully amiss or is greatly missing. For the a lot of part, Christianity has claimed that humans accept rebelled adjoin God with the aftereffect that they are 'sinners' in allegation of apology and that the apple is a complete biased abode in allegation of healing. What Hubbard seems to be adage is that animal beings are actually something abroad - thetans trapped in bodies in the complete apple - and that Scientology can both deathwatch them up and save them from this bad situation."
The abbey considers OT III arcane material. But there are abundant science-fiction references in Scientology texts attainable to associates of all levels. The official "Glossary for Scientology and Dianetics" includes an access for "space opera," a sci-fi brand that the comment says "is not fiction and apropos complete incidents." Scientology's "Technical Dictionary" makes advertence to a bulk of exoteric "invader forces," including one, the "Marcab Confederacy," explained as a vast, interplanetary acculturation added than 200,000 years old that "looks about exact alike [sic] but is worse off than the accepted U.S. civilization." Indeed, as even Rinder himself believability out, Hubbard presented a asperous outline of the Xenu adventure to his followers in a 1967 taped lecture, "RJ 67," in which he acclaimed that 75 amateur years ago a adverse accident happened in this area of the galaxy that has acquired abrogating furnishings for anybody since. This complete is attainable to lower-level Scientologists. But the abstracts of the adventure abide abstruse aural Scientology.
Rinder has fielded questions on Scientology's behavior for years. If I ask him whether there is any ascendancy to the Xenu story, he gets red-faced, about traveling into a tirade. "It is not a story, it is an auditing level," he says, neither acknowledging nor abstinent that this canon exists. He says that OT complete - and accurately the complete on OT III - comprises "a baby percent" of what Scientology is all about. But it is anxiously guarded. Scientologists on the OT levels about backpack their abstracts in bound briefcases and are told to abundance them in appropriate defended locations in their homes. They are aswell anxiously banned from discussing any angle of the materials, even with their families. "I'm not answer it to you, and I could not explain it to you," says Rinder heatedly. "You don't accept a achievement of compassionate it."
Those who accept accomplished OT III abode that accepting through it can be a agonizing experience. Tory Christman, a above baronial Scientologist who during her administration in the acceptance accomplished the near-pinnacle of enlightenment, OT VII, says it took added than ten years afore she was assuredly access assimilate OT III. Already there, Christman was shocked. "You've jumped through all these hoops just to get to it, and afresh you attainable that packet, and the aboriginal affair you anticipate is, 'Come on,'" she says. "You're amidst by all these humans who're going, 'Wow, isn't it amazing, just accepting the data? I can acquaint it's actually afflicted you.' Afterwards a while, abundant humans say it and you're like, 'Wow. You know, I actually feel it.'"
Natalie has a connected way to go afore she alcove OT III. Although about aggregate about the OT levels is attainable on the Internet, "I don't attending at that stuff," Natalie says. She believes it is mostly "entheta," which are lies, or abrogating advice about Scientology meant to attenuate the faith. "You know, sometimes in school, kids would apprehend I'm a Scientologist and be like, 'No way - are you an alien?'" Natalie says. "I don't get mad about it. I just go, 'OK, let me acquaint you what it actually is.'"
Natalie's appearance of Scientology is the one abbey admiral promote: that it is not a adoration about "space aliens" but artlessly a set of behavior that can advice a getting reside a bigger life. And Natalie appears to be the affiche adolescent for Scientology as a blueprint for a well-adjusted adolescence. Articulate and poised, she is abutting to her family, has a advanced amphitheater of Scientologist and non-Scientologist accompany and accelerating from top academy abide bounce as a straight-A student. "I'm not adage that everybody accept to be a Scientologist," she says. "But what I am adage is that I see it work. I've abstruse so abundant about myself. LRH says, 'What is accurate for you is what you beam to be true.' So I'm not actuality to acquaint you that Scientology is the way, or that these are the answers. You adjudge what is true."
Truth is a about abstraction if discussing the activity of Lafayette Ronald Hubbard. He was built-in in 1911, and, according to his legend, lived a activity of ballsy acts and abundant accurate and airy adeptness until his death, in 1986. Photos of Hubbard in able-bodied boilerplate age - about cutting an ascot - adhere in every Scientology center.
You can apprehend Hubbard's official adventures on the Scientology Web site, which portrays the man Scientologists alarm the "Founder" as a abundant thinker, teacher, scientist, adventurer, ethnographer, photographer, sailor and war hero.
The absoluteness of Hubbard's activity is beneath animating but in abounding agency added interesting. The son of a U.S. argosy officer, he was by all accounts an accustomed adolescence from Tilden, Nebraska, who flunked out of George Washington University afterwards his green year and afterwards activate abstinent success as a penny-a-word biographer of lurid fiction, publishing hundreds of acceptance in fantasy magazines like Astounding Science Fiction. As a abettor in the Navy, Hubbard served, briefly, in Apple War II, but never saw action and was adequate of his command. He spent the abide months of the war as an outpatient at a argosy hospital in Oakland, California, area he accustomed analysis for ulcers. Years later, Hubbard would affirmation to accept been "crippled and blinded" in battle, and that, over a year or so of acute "scientific research," he'd convalescent himself appliance techniques that would afterwards become allotment of Dianetics.
After the war, Hubbard fabricated his way to Pasadena, California, a accurate boomtown of the 1940s, area he met John Whiteside Parsons, a association amount and a architect of CalTech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. A sci-fi buff, Parsons was aswell a addict of the English occultist Aleister Crowley. Parsons befriended Hubbard and access him to move assimilate his estate. In one of the drifter capacity in Hubbard's life, recorded in detail by several biographers, the -to-be architect of Dianetics became Parsons' abettor - allowance him with a array of black-magic and sex rituals, including one in which Parsons attempted to adjure a accurate "whore of Babalon [sic]," with Hubbard confined as apprentice.
Charming and charismatic, Hubbard succeeded in admiring abroad Parsons' mistress, Sara Northrup, whom he would afterwards marry. Anon afterward, he fell out with Parsons over a business venture. But accepting captivated acquaint abstruse at Parsons'"lodge," Hubbard set out to amount his next step. In his 1983 autobiography, Over My Shoulder: Reflections on a Science Fiction Era, the sci-fi biographer Lloyd Eshbach describes affair Hubbard in the backward 1940s. "I'd like to alpha a religion," Eshbach recalls Hubbard saying. "That's area the money is."
Dianetics: The Avant-garde Science of Brainy Health was appear in May 1950, and it anon became a delinquent hit. Accounting as array of a activated pop-psychology book, Dianetics promised that by practicing assertive techniques, some of which seemed about hypnotic, one could be chargeless of sickness, anxiety, assailment and anti-social tendencies, and advance complete anamnesis and alarming intelligence. Hailed by the bi-weekly columnist Walter Winchell as a "new science" that "from all breach will prove to be as advocate for altruism as the aboriginal caveman's analysis and appliance of fire," Dianetics remained on the New York Times best-seller account for twenty-eight afterwards weeks.
But a bulk of factors, including accusation from the American Psychological Association, aching book sales. Attainable abutment for Dianetics took a downturn, and by the end of 1952, Hubbard was adverse banking ruin.
Rather than accept defeat, Hubbard "improved" Dianetics and apparent what he claimed was an even added developed aisle to enlightenment: Scientology. This new abode was advised to restore, or enhance, the abilities of the individual, as adjoin to artlessly accepting rid of the acknowledging mind. In 1954, the aboriginal Abbey of Scientology was born, in Los Angeles. L. Ron Hubbard was now the architect of his own religion.
From there, Hubbard set about overextension Scientology about the world, aperture churches in England, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere. In 1955, a action accepted as "Project Celebrity" was launched with the aim of recruiting stars in the arts, sports, business and government - those dubbed "Prime Communicators" - who could advice advertise the message. As incentive, these celebrities were accustomed chargeless courses; those who did outstanding plan could be "awarded" an OT level, in account of their account to the organization. Appropriate churches - accepted as "celebrity centres" - were set up, acceptance its associates to convenance Scientology abroad from the attainable eye. The a lot of abundant of these is the neo-Gothic Celebrity Centre International, which is housed in a above alcazar on Franklin Avenue, at the bottom of the Hollywood Hills.
Among the high-profile types who dabbled in Scientology was the biographer William S. Burroughs, who would afterwards advance the authoritative anatomy as suppressive of complete thought. But added artists were beneath critical. John Travolta became a Scientologist in 1975 afterwards account Dianetics. "My career anon took off," he states in a claimed "success story" appear in the book What Is Scientology? "I landed a arch role on the TV appearance Welcome Back, Kotter and had a cord of acknowledged films." Indeed, Travolta says, "Scientology put me into the big time."
In accession to Travolta, Scientology admiring musicians Chick Corea and lsaac Hayes, actresses Mimi Rogers and Kirstie Alley, and the affecting acting drillmaster Milton Katselas, who brought in a bulk of others, including actresses Anne Archer and Kelly Preston, who afterwards became Travolta's wife. And those celebrities begat others, including Tom Cruise, who was alien by his then-wife, Rogers, and Jenna Elfman, alien by her husband, amateur Bodhi Elfman. Others, such as Juliette Lewis, Erika Christensen and Beck, were built-in into Scientology.
But as Scientology aloft its profile, so too did it acquisition itself beneath added analysis by the U.S. government, which raided Scientology's offices a bulk of times in the backward 1950s and aboriginal 1960s. In 1963, the Aliment and Biologic Administration confiscated hundreds of E-meters from Scientology's Washington, D.C., offices (the FDA accused the abbey of authoritative apocryphal claims about its healing powers). Anon afterward, Hubbard confused his abject of operation from the U.S. to England, but connected to face accusation from a array of Western governments. To abstain such scrutiny, Hubbard purchased a baby agile of ships in 1967, and, dubbing himself "Commodore," headed for the top seas, which would serve as Scientology's official home and, some maintain, tax accommodation until the mid-1970s.
Serving Hubbard at sea were a baby accumulation of adherent followers who comprised a clandestine fleet of sorts. They were known, collectively, as the "Sea Organization," and dressed in abounding argosy uniforms. Mike Rinder, who abutting the Sea Org if he was eighteen, served on Hubbard's advance ship, the Apollo, as a deckhand. He accustomed in 1973, accepting endured years of bigotry in his built-in Australia (southeastern Australia banned Scientology from 1965 to 1982). "You couldn't own Scientology books," he says. "If you did, you had to adumbrate them because if the badge came and activate them, they'd yield them away."
On the Apollo, Rinder activate Hubbard, a accounted recluse, to be actually accessible. He hosted account cine nights and about strolled above the abode talking with the crew. "What was a lot of absurd about accepting with him was that he fabricated you feel that you were important," Rinder recalls. "He didn't in any way advance himself or his own self-importance. He was very, complete admiring and had the widest ambit of adeptness and acquaintance that you could possibly brainstorm - he'd advised everything," Rinder marvels at Hubbard's abilities: He knew how to breed plants, fix cars, shoot movies, mix music, fly an airplane, captain ships.
At sea, Hubbard, who had clearly accommodated his column as the arch of the Abbey of Scientology (leaving the circadian administration of the abbey to bottom officials), formed on his writings and "discoveries." Hubbard aswell began to captivate over the armament he saw opposing him, including journalists, whom Hubbard connected distrusted and even banned from anytime acceptable Scientologists. Worse still were psychiatrists, a accumulation that, accompanying with the pharmaceutical-drug industry - in Hubbard's words, a "front group" - operated "straight out of the agitator textbooks," as he wrote in a 1969 commodity blue-blooded "Today's Terrorism." He accused psychiatrists of kidnapping, disturbing and murdering with impunity. "A psychiatrist," he wrote, "kills a adolescent babe for animal kicks, murders a dozen patients with an ice pick, castrates a hundred men."
To advance his enemies, Hubbard issued a action accepted as "Fair Game," which maintained that all who adjoin Scientology could be "tricked, sued or aria to and destroyed." This action was activated by Scientology's quasisecret badge force, accepted as the Guardian's Office. By the 1970s, a allotment of its tasks was "Operation Snow White," a alternation of buried activities that included bugging the Apology Administration and break-in abstracts from the IRS. (Scientology admiral say Fair Bold was canceled decades ago.)
The plan was apparent in FBI raids on Scientology's Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., offices in 1977, which yielded eavesdrop equipment, break-in accoutrement and about 90,000 pages of documents. Eleven Scientology officials, including Hubbard's third wife, Mary Sue, went to federal bastille for their role in the plot, which led to a 1982 "sweep" of the church's top management.
By then, Hubbard, who was cited as an "unindicted co-conspirator" in Operation Snow White, had vanished from the attainable eye. For the next several years, rumors of his abode broadcast advisedly - he was at sea; he was on an island. In fact. Hubbard was on his abandoned ranch, Whispering Wind, abreast the boondocks of Creston, in the California desert. He was abounding by a baby bulk of Scientology officials, and his physician, Dr. Eugene Denk, who advised him for a bulk of conditions, including abiding pancre-atitis. On January 17th, 1986, Hubbard suffered a crippling stroke. A anniversary later, he died, in a 1982 Dejected Bird motor home on his property. He was seventy-four years old.
Upon Hubbard's death, his aggressive twenty-five-year-old aide, David Miscavige, who would anon accomplish him as baton of the church, appear that Scientoloy's architect had agreeably "dropped" his advantageous physique and confused on to addition dimension. In befitting with Hubbard's wishes, his physique was cremated aural twenty-four hours. There was no autopsy. But the coroner's abode declared the ancestor of Scientology as in a accompaniment of decrepitude: unshaven, with long, abrasion whitish-red hair and bedraggled fingernails and toenails. In Hubbard's arrangement was the anti-anxiety biologic hydroxyzine (Vistaril), which several of his administration would afterwards adjure was abandoned one of abounding psychiatric and affliction medications Hubbard ingested over the years.
These secrets were kept beneath wraps by Scientology officials. The abbey would afterwards be alleged Hubbard's almsman in accordance with his will, which had been adapted and alive just a day afore his death. In it, Hubbard ceded the copyrights to all of his works, as able-bodied as a cogent allocation of his estate, authoritative Scientology, not Hubbard's wife and 5 children, his primary heir.
Today, every abbey or Scientology alignment has an appointment aloof for Hubbard. Usually activate on the church's arena floor, it is anxiously maintained with books, desk, chair, pens, notepads, board ornaments and added accouterments, as if the Architect adeptness airing in at any moment.
The arty limestone-and-granite Abbey of Scientology in midtown Manhattan calls itself the "New York Org." A august architecture on West 46th Street, northwest of Times Square, it is actuality that I come, on a hot July afternoon, to acquaintance Scientology for myself.
The aboriginal Scientologist I accommodated actuality is a kid alleged Emmett: a clear-eyed and agog adolescent man in his aboriginal twenties whose job is to be a "body-router," which agency anyone who brings humans into the church. "Hi!" he says, accosting me as I angle abreast the centers entrance. "Do you accept a minute?" He after-effects a postcard-size flier in my face. "We're assuming a fifteen-minute blur inside," he says. "It's about Dianetics. Anytime heard of it?"
He ushers me through a set of bottle doors and into the church's lobby, a glossy-marble amplitude with the affectionate of lighting that bathes aggregate in a pinkish-golden glow. It is set up as a array of museum, with a bulk of video-display panels, one of which offers an ardent affidavit by Tom Cruise. "The Aims of Scientology," a certificate accounting by Hubbard, aswell hangs in the lobby, and it declares Scientology's goals as "simple, but great," including "a acculturation afterwards insanity, afterwards abyss and afterwards war; area the able can advance and honest beings can accept rights, and area man is chargeless to acceleration to greater heights."
The New York Org claims to accept added than 500 buzz calls per day, and about as abounding visitors in a week. But abreast from its staff, I acquisition the abode to be about actually empty. Seated abandoned in a baby auditorium, I watch the film, which turns out to be an infomercial featuring a casting of "real" humans talking about how Dianetics afflicted their lives, abating them of ailments alignment from blight to depression. Scientology is not mentioned already in the film. Nor is Hubbard. And neither are mentioned afterward, during an hour or so babble I accept with a affectionate woman in her aboriginal fifties alleged Laurie. She is what is accepted as a "greeter," and her role is to accumulate me in the abbey lung abundant for me to feel encouraged that, maybe, all of this is account my time.
Self-betterment is a able abstraction to use as a sales technique, and Laurie begins her angle in the gentlest of ways. "Tell me about yourself," she says. "What fabricated you absorbed in Scientology?"
"I assumption I was just curious," I acquaint Laurie.
"Good!" she says with a smile. "We like curious!"
In the next hour or so, Laurie asks me a bulk of questions: Am I married? Am I happy? What are my goals? Do I feel that I'm alive up to my potential?
A aborticide to reside up to abeyant is one of the things accepted in Scientology as one's "ruin." In aggravating to get at mine, Laurie is balmy and nonaggressive. And, to my amazement, I activate to attainable up to her. While we chat, she delivers a bendable advertise for Scientology's "introductory package": a four-hour academy and twelve hours of Dianetics auditing, which is done afterwards the E-meter. The cost: just fifty dollars. "You don't accept to do it," Laurie says. "It's just something I get the activity adeptness advice you." She pats my arm, squeezes it warmly.
Then she gets down to business and presents me with the $100 Dianetics "starter" kit, which includes a large-type archetype of Hubbard's tome, a few CDs and some workbooks to convenance the getting at home. "It's actually such a acceptable affair you came in," Laurie adds reassuringly. "You'll see."
On my next appointment to the church, the afterward day, I see Laurie again. She spots me as anon as I airing in and rushes to accost me. "You're back!" She gives me a hug. "I am so animated you absitively to accord this a try." She afresh introduces me to a preppy-looking guy in his aboriginal thirties alleged Rurik, who, crumbling no time on baby talk, leads me to the church's additional attic and installs me in a allowance for my anterior seminar. As with the antecedent day's film, I'm the abandoned one there.
Rurik starts his abode with the affirmation that the apperception actually isn't in the brain. "Close your eyes and anticipate of a account of a cat," he tells me. I do. "Now, attainable your eyes and point to area you saw that picture."
I point to my eyes.
Rurik grins. "See? If you're asked to use your mind, you don't point to the brain."
The brain, Rurik says, has actually no abode on our thoughts or feelings. Nor, he adds, does the apperception - its arch action is to serve as a anamnesis coffer of all we've accomplished in trillions of years of lifetimes. Indeed, Scientology holds that the complete acreage of acoustic and mental-health assay - from Freud to the abstraction of academician allure - is pseudoscience. In Scientology's overview text, What Is Scientology?, psychiatry is declared as a "hodgepodge of unprove theories that accept never produced any aftereffect - except an adeptness to accomplish the annoying and alienated added accommodating and quiet, and about-face the afflicted into blah souls above the point of caring."
Most of the committed Scientologists I accommodated answer this opinion, including Kirstie Alley, who has been a Scientologist for added than twenty years and is the all-embracing agent for Narconon, the church-supported anti-drug program. In an account with Alley several weeks later, she calls Scientology the "anti-therapy." "Therapy is based on some guy allegory you, and what he thinks is traveling on with you," she says. "And if he can't absolutely amount it out, he makes up a ache and gets a biologic for that. If that doesn't work, he shocks you. And afresh surgery..." Scientology employs a holistic detoxification affairs accepted as the "purification rundown," which involves abundant doses of vitamin supplements, primarily niacin, acclimated in affiliation with exercise and connected hours in a sauna. Admitting abounding doctors point out that none of this has anytime been scientifically proven, and, indeed, adeptness be harmful, Scientology claims that the "purif" cleanses the physique of impurities. "I can get anyone off heroin a hell of a lot faster than I can get somebody off a attitude drug," says Alley. "The guy on heroin's not accepting told daily, 'This is what you allegation for your disease, and you're gonna accept to yield this the blow of your life.'"
A few canicule afterwards I access for my chargeless Dianetics auditing sessions. I am put in a large, glass-enclosed allowance with a amateur accountant alleged David, who asks me to "relive" a moment of concrete pain. "Don't accept something that's too stressful," David suggests.
Try as I might, I cannot bethink abundant of annihilation - indeed, I can about focus, accustomed that I am amidst in the allowance by a bulk of added pairs who are all accepting asked to do the aforementioned thing. Afterwards fifteen minutes, I accord up.
Jane, the agent who is now administration my "case," afresh whisks me abroad and, demography a attending at my Oxford Capacity Assay - a 200-item analysis that I abounding out on my aboriginal day - tells me that she thinks I allegation something added personal. "I actually wish you to accept a win," she says.
What Jane recommends is alleged Activity Repair, basal Scientology counseling that she explains will "get to the basis of what's inhibiting you." It is conducted in a clandestine room, and involves one, but a lot of acceptable two, 12.5-hour auditing "intensives," appliance the E-meter, which will bulk about $2,000. Accompanying with the purif, which is recommended to anyone starting in Scientology, the complete bulk will be about $4,000. "And afresh you'll be on the Bridge," Jane says enthusiastically. "You'll see. It'll change your life."
At the assimilation level, Scientology comes above as good, activated self-help. Rather than arena on capacity that adeptness ambit a abeyant affiliate - the abstraction that I am a "thetan," for archetype - associates hit on capacity that accept accepted appeal. Instead of claiming some acute bulk of enlightenment, they appear above as adolescent travelers: humans who smoke too much, who accept had bad marriages, who accept had addictions they couldn't handle but accept somehow managed to acreage on their feet. Scientology, they explain, has been a anatomy of "recovery." As one woman I accommodated puts it, "Scientology works."
There are, however, a few things that assume jarring. Like the cost: $4,000 is a lot to absorb for what Jane suggests are "basic" sessions. But conceivably even added alarming is the agog absorption they yield in my boyfriend. While Laurie inquired affably about the activating of our relationship, Jane is suspicious, anxious with his angle of the abbey and his attitude adjoin my accepting here. "If he's not open," she says, "that could be a problem."
And afresh there are Scientology's rules. A angrily authoritarian religion, Scientology follows Hubbard's edicts to the letter. Dissent or action to any of Hubbard's angle isn't tolerated. Nor is debating assertive abbey credo - a convenance Scientologists appearance as "counterintentioned." Comporting oneself in any way that could be apparent as adverse to abbey goals is advised destructive and is accepted as a "suppressive act." One argument that sheds broad-mindedness on both the mind-set of the architect and the abutting apparatus of the abbey is Introduction to Scientology Ethics, which every Scientologist owns. In this book, the account of suppressive acts is six pages connected and includes crimes alignment from annihilation to "squirreling," or altering Hubbard's teachings.
Jane calmly me a anatomy and asks me to sign. The certificate absolves Scientology of accountability if I am not wholly annoyed with its services, and aswell requires me to agreement that neither I nor my ancestors has anytime sued, attacked or about criticized Scientology. It aswell asks me to agreement that I will never sue the abbey myself.
For the next several months, Jane and assorted added registrars alarm my corpuscle phone, allurement me to appear aback to the abbey and accept a "win." I never do.
Somewhere in the all-inclusive California backcountry east of Los Angeles, west of Palm Springs and abreast the boondocks of Hemet, is Gold Base, the affection of the Scientology empire. It has been declared in some account letters as a "top-secret" facility, monitored by aegis cameras and adequate by electric fences. A lot of Scientologists accept never been to Gold. Aural abbey circles, it is about appear of in whispers: as INT Base, Scientology's administration abode and alliance for the brand of Tom Cruise and David Miscavige.
Gold, a above resort, was purchased by the abbey in the mid-Eighties and sits at the bottom of the San Jacinto Mountains. A simple metal aboideau announces its presence, abaft which is a connected driveway and, above that, a golf course. The 500-acre area awning blooming meadows and a baby basin area swans and ducks roam at will. There are no arresting aegis cameras. But there are electric fences. "Of course we accept fences," says Tommy Davis, a arch abbey official who, with Rinder, accompanies me on a bout of the compound.
"We accept $60 amateur account of accessories here."
Gold is the axial broadcasting adeptness for the church. It is best accepted as the home of Golden Era Productions, Scientology's film, video and complete facilities. Scientology produces countless promotional and training films here, teaching aggregation aggregate from auditing techniques to what goes on during a marriage-counseling session. It aswell makes CDs, produces contest and prints its own packaging. Even its E-meters are fabricated here, in a architecture area Scientologists plan on a array of accumulated accumulation line, bearing about 200 of the accessories per week.
There is a Disney-esque superior to Gold Base. The focal point of the circuitous is a biscuit acreage house, accepted as the Castle, which houses the blur wing. The Tavern, a adjacent rock carriage-house building, is acclimated for visiting VIPs and is busy in a King Arthur motif, complete with a ample annular table. There are ambagious paths and walkways fabricated out of what appears to be affected flagstone. All of the buildings, save the Castle, are white, with blue-tiled roofs.
Breaking up the accord is a amazing sight: a threemast rudderless clipper ship, the Star of California, congenital into a acropolis overlooking the campus. Some above Scientologists say this anatomy was congenital for Hubbard - admitting he'd "dropped his body" afore it was accomplished - but Rinder explains it as just "an abstraction anyone had to body a ship" as a abode to abode restrooms and a bite bar abreast the pool. It has a ample board deck, bogie figurines and, at its gangplank, a fishing net adorned with artificial crabs.
Despite these bright landmarks, Gold is about an appointment park. Its barrio are furnished like a alternation of accumulated suites, complete with banal gray or dejected rugs. There's about no artwork save a few Scientology posters inscribed with the words of L. Ron Hubbard, and, in the complete studio, affected headshots of assorted Scientologist celebrities, including Tommy Davis' mother, Anne Archer.
Davis, 33, helps run the Celebrity Centre in Hollywood and is the begat of one of California's complete acreage dynasties. He advisedly admits to accepting a Hollywood affluent kid. He dresses in Italian suits, drives a BMW and is absorbed to his Blackberry. "I accept abundant money to never plan a day in my life," he says.
But Davis, who calls L. Ron Hubbard "the coolest guy ever," works for the abbey as a nonuniformed affiliate of the Sea Organization, the Abbey of Scientology's a lot of able entity. Sea Org associates agents all of the arch abbey positions in the abbey hierarchy, and the top associates accept complete ascendancy over Scientology's funds. In a nod to the group's abyssal beginnings, Sea Org associates were appropriate to abrasion naval-style uniforms, complete with epaulets for "officers," until several years ago. Today, for all but those who serve on the Freewinds, the epaulets accept been retired. At Gold, whose complete population, save the actors and admiral of Scientology films, are Sea Org members, men and women dress in the appearance of deckhands: short-sleeve dress shirts over aphotic T-shirts and chinos.
The abbey describes the Sea Org as a congenial adjustment - not a acknowledged commodity - acute constant commitment. It is, in fact, an abiding commitment: Sea Org associates assurance affairs alliance billion years of account to the church. Scientology's publicity abstracts portray the Sea Org as agnate to the U.S. Marines: "The toughest, a lot of committed aggregation this planet has anytime known," according to one recruiting brochure. "Against such a able aggregation the action hasn't got a chance."
Kim Fries, who works in Gold's audiovisual alteration department, has been in the Sea Org aback she was fifteen. Now thirty-two, Fries says she couldn't brainstorm alive any added way. "What abroad are you traveling to do with your life?" she says, with a flick of her dark, bouncing hair.
The Sea Org has about been portrayed as isolated, about monastic; associates are rarely accustomed to see films, watch TV or apprehend boilerplate magazines. "Are we devoted? Yes. Sequestered? No," says Fries, who affiliated a adolescent Sea Org member. "I go out into the world, I allocution to humans out in the world, I absolutely reside a complete abounding life. This isn't a priesthood. I mean, if it were a priesthood, do you anticipate I'd plan here? It would just be so unhip."
Gold is apparent as the abode "every Sea Org affiliate aspires to work," says Rinder. There are all-embracing area to wander, a crystal-blue basin in which to swim; the dining anteroom is ample and appearance low-fat and vegetarian entrees. A tiny boutique sells cigarettes, juice, bendable drinks and clutter food.
In my ten or so hours at Gold, I am acquainted of accepting taken on an elaborately orchestrated junket, in which every footfall of my day has been advised and planned. I don't accusation the accumulation for absent to present its best face; at atomic bisected of my conversations with Rinder and Davis affect in one way or addition to what Scientology perceives as a apply advance on the allotment of the boilerplate media. A arch complaint is that reporters, acquisitive for a story, yield the words of accomplished associates as gospel. Davis says Scientology gets little acclaim for the success of its social-betterment programs, which awning Narconon and aswell articulacy and educational programs. "Look around," says Davis. "People are out actuality busting their base every day to accomplish a difference. And one guy who leaves because he wants to go to the movies gets to characterize the accomplished organization? That sucks."
Scientologists do not attending attentive on critics, decidedly those who were already devout. Apostasy, which in Scientology agency speaking out adjoin the abbey in any attainable forum, is advised to be the accomplished anatomy of treason. This is one of the a lot of austere "suppressive acts," and those who abandon are anon branded as "Suppressive Persons," or SPs. Scientologists are accomplished that SPs are angry - Hitler was an SP, says Rinder. Indeed, Hubbard believed that a abounding 2.5 percent of the citizenry was "suppressive." As he wrote in the Dianetics and Scientology Technical Dietionary, a suppressive getting is anyone who "goofs up or vilifies any accomplishment to advice anybody and decidedly knife with abandon annihilation affected to accomplish animal beings added able or added intelligent."
Given this viewpoint, I admiration why anyone with access to Scientology would appraisal them publicly. "Makes them famous," Rinder says. "They do it for their fifteen minutes."
Scientology has been acutely able at advancing its defectors, about antibacterial their believability entirely, a action that assemblage alarm "dead agenting." Some of the church's highest-profile critics say they accept been on the accepting end of this policy. In the accomplished six years, Tory Christman claims, the abbey has advance lies about her on the Internet, filed clothing adjoin her for actionable an admonition for picketing on abbey acreage and attempted to get her accursed from her job. Rinder dismisses Christman as a "wacko" and says her allegations are "absolute bullshit."
When Christman breach from the church, her bedmate and a lot of of her accompany - all of them Scientologists - banned to allocution to her again. Apostates are not just discredited from the church; the are aswell excommunicated, abandoned from their admired ones who, beneath Scientology rules, accept to bisect or "disconnect" from them. Scientology defines those associated with Suppressive Humans as "Potential Agitation Sources," or PTS.
Rinder says breach is a action of abide resort. "The aboriginal footfall is consistently to try to handle the situation," he says. A "handling" about refers to persuading a aberrant affiliate to acknowledgment to the abbey in adjustment to advance acquaintance with his family. The ancestor of anyone who's apostatized adeptness alarm his adolescent and ask him to "handle" a botheration by about recanting. "They'll ask them to accomplish some amends, appearance they can be trusted ... something to accomplish up the damage," says Davis. Those apology adeptness ambit from volunteering in a articulacy affairs to demography a attainable advance role - advance adjoin psychiatry, for example.
But some people, the admiral admit, debris to be handled. What happens to them? "Then I assumption not assertive in Scientology agency added to them than not seeing their family," Davis says.
Excommunication is annihilation new in organized religion. A bulk of sects accept agnate behavior to Scientology's: the Amish, the Mormon Fundamentalists, the Jehovah's Witnesses. All accept a rationale. Scientology's account is complete simple: "We are absorption the acceptable of the adoration and all the parishioners," says Rinder.
"It's for the acceptable of the group," says Davis.
"How are you traveling to adjudicator what is and isn't the affliction credo and violations of the Abbey of Scientology?" Rinder asks. "You aren't a Scientologist." Complaints about these policies, he adds, "come from humans who aren't Scientologists [anymore]. What do they accord a bits for anymore? They left!"
I absorb a lot of time talking about the catechism of alienation with Rinder and Davis. Both feel the abbey has been miscast. "Somewhere there is a abstraction that we ascendancy strings over all these humans and ascendancy them," says Rinder. But provided you don't accuse Scientology, it's altogether accomplished to leave the church, he says. "Whatever, What's accurate for you is accurate for you." Annihilation will appear to those who lose their faith, he says, unless they "tell bald-faced lies to antagonistic and aspersion the alignment - unless they accomplish it assume like something it isn't."
Paul James is not this twenty-two-year-old man's complete name. He is the son of accustomed Scientologists, albino and blue-eyed, with the simple smile and adamant acceptable looks of a adolescent Matt Damon. He has had no acquaintance with the abbey aback he was seventeen. "I candidly don't apperceive how humans can reside absurdly blessed all the time," Paul tells me awning coffee one afternoon at his small, tidy abode alfresco Los Angeles, "Or thinking that they're happy," he adds with a grin. "I'm talking about that fake-happiness affair that humans accomplish themselves believe."
Like Natalie, Paul was accomplished by Scientology tutors, beatific to Scientologist-run clandestine schools and put "on course" at his church. Unlike her, he hated it. "I never activate annihilation in Scientology that had to do with airy enlightenment," he says. "As anon as accepted faculty started hitting me" - about the age about - "it creeped me out."
Though there are a cogent bulk of second-generation Scientologists who, like Natalie, are adherent to the church, there are aswell kids like Paul. This, says the University of Alberta's Stephen Kent, is to be expected. One "unanticipated consequence" of the boundless conversions of adolescent humans to sects like Scientology in the 1960s and 1970s, Kent says, has been a "wave" of defections of these members' developed children.
A axiological aspect of Scientology is that accouchement are about admired as baby adults - "big thetans in little bodies," as some parents alarm them. Paul's parents formed eighteen-hour canicule for the church, he says, and about larboard him and his earlier brother to their own devices. "My brother was baby-sitting me by himself if he was eleven years old," Paul says. If his brother went off with his friends, "I'd get home from academy and be abnormality about the [apartment] complex."
Paul's academy was no added structured, he says. Acceptance were encouraged to plan at their own clip on capacity of their choosing, and, according to Paul, accustomed little advice from teachers, who are alleged "supervisors." I activate this to be accurate at the Delphi Academy in Basin Appearance Terrace, California, allotment of a arrangement of aristocratic schools that use Hubbard's abstraction technology. Maggie Reinhart, Delphi's director, says that this abode armament a amateur to yield an alive role in his education. A bulk of Scientology kids accept thrived in this environment. Others, like Paul, acquainted lost. "I just affectionate of roamed from classroom to classroom and cipher cared," he says. At Delphi, I saw agents acceptable assertive students, but there was no ambiguous "teaching," no chic discussions.
Discussion, as some academics like Kent note, isn't encouraged in Scientology, nor in Scientology-oriented schools. It is apparent as active adverse to the commodity of Scientology, which are absolute. Thus, agitation is relegated to those in the apple of "Wogs" - what Scientologists alarm non-Scientologists. Or, as Hubbard declared them, "common, ordinary, run-of-the-mill, boilerplate humanoid[s]."
Paul met complete few Wogs growing up, and those he did apperceive about didn't accept him. Scientology has its own altered lexicon. "It's affectionate of like accepting a French Canadian," Paul explains. "You allege one affair out in the apple and addition affair at home."
Many kids who've developed up in Scientology alarm it as Natalie did: "a bubble" that exists in bike with the boilerplate world. "It's absurd to accept it unless you've lived it," says Paul.
Even if you've lived it, as one adolescent woman notes, it's harder to absolutely understand. This twenty-two-year-old, whom we'll alarm Sara, larboard Scientology in top school. Afterwards leaving, she and a acquaintance who abdicate with her sat down with a dictionary. "We looked up all the words we acclimated [because] we didn't apperceive if we were speaking English or not," she says.
Hubbard created Scientology's accent to be altered to its members. It includes words that are interpretations, or variations, of accepted terms: "isness," for example, which Scientology's glossaries say, in essence, agency "reality." But there are aswell words that are wholly fabricated up, such as "obnosis," which agency "observation of the obvious."
The anarchic world, as one adeptness alarm it in the mainstream, is, in Scientology, "enturbulated," which agency "agitated and disturbed." To correct, or solve, claimed or civic problems requires the able appliance of "ethics," which in Scientology refers to one's moral choices, as able-bodied as to a audible moral system. Those who conduct themselves accurately accept their acceptance "in." Those who misbehave are "outethics." A person's adverse or abrogating acts are accepted as "overts." Covering them up is accepted as a "withhold."
All of these terms, and abounding more, are complete in a bulk of Scientology dictionaries, all accounting by Hubbard. Scientologists accede babble apperception and cant abilities to be capital locations of their faith.
The Hubbard Abstraction Technology is administered in schools through an alignment alleged "Applied Scholastics"; it emphasizes searching up any conflicting or "misunderstood" babble in a dictionary, and never absence accomplished a babble you don't understand. This aforementioned abstraction adjustment is acclimated in church, area adults of all ages and levels of advance absorb hours poring over dictionaries and advance manuals.
One key babble is "gradient," which is authentic in the official Scientology and Dianetics comment as "a bit-by-bit access to something, taken footfall by step, akin by level, anniversary footfall or akin being, of itself, calmly surmountable so that, finally, absolutely complicated and difficult activities or top states of accepting can be accomplished with about ease." This principle, the comment notes, "is activated to both Scientology processing and training."
Another key acceptance is "communication." One of Scientology's basal courses is "Success Through Communication," accomplished to adolescent humans and adults. It involves a alternation of drills, accepted as "training routines," or "TRs." One assignment asks acceptance to abutting their eyes and artlessly sit, sometimes for hours. Addition asks them to beam at a partner, immobile. A third requires acceptance to mock, antic with or contrarily verbally appoint their partner. The accomplice accept to irenic accept these comments afterwards affective or adage a word.
These drills, Scientologists say, advice advance what they alarm their "confront," which in Scientology's concordance agency "the adeptness to be there calmly and perceive." A fourth assignment requires acceptance to affectation a alternation of questions to one another, such as "Do angle swim?" Their accomplice may acknowledge in any way they like, with the catechism accepting asked again until the accomplice answers correctly. Sara's admired assignment circuitous an ashtray: "You acquaint it to angle up, sit down, and you 'move' the ashtray for hours. You're declared to be bright your ambition into the ashtray, and the administrator is traveling to acquaint you if you're absorbed enough."
At Delphi, acceptance yield a advance alleged "Improving Conditions." "Conditions" refers to key Hubbard principles. Charted on a scale, they chronicle to one's accord to oneself and to those aural one's organization, academy or "group." A Scientologist's goal, it's about noted, is to "improve conditions."
From accomplished to lowest, the Altitude are: Power, Power Change, Affluence, Normal, Emergency, Danger, Non-Existence, Liability, Doubt, Enemy, Crime and Confusion. Together, these altitude anatomy the aback of the activated appliance of Scientology "ethics," which is, abounding say, the accurate affection of the faith. "Ethics," as a Scientological term, is authentic as "rationality adjoin the greatest acceptable for the greatest bulk of dynamics," as able-bodied as "reason and the ambition of optimum survival."
To survive, Scientology applies its philosophy, or "ethics tech," above a ample amusing and civic scale. They do acceptable works - indeed, as Rinder notes, "Scientologists are apprenticed by a complete affair for the abundance of others. They see the apple about them and wish to do something about it."
But the church's drug-treatment and articulacy programs and anti-psychiatry campaigns do added than just deliver through charity; in fact, they abide abundantly to advice adapt humans to become Scientologists. Already a getting is drug-free, psychiatrist-free and literate, he is able for auditing. And auditing is the centerpiece of Scientology. "It's all about traveling up the Bridge," says Paul.
Paul began auditing if he was four. Rebellious by nature, he says it did complete little for him. By the age of eleven or twelve, he says, "I was so out of control, my parents had no abstraction what to do with me."
Scientologists run a bulk of boarding schools about the country, including the celebrated Delphian School, in the Willamette Valley of Oregon, which counts Earthlink architect Sky Dayton a allotment of its graduates. Scientologists' kids who acquired trouble, or contrarily affronted their parents, accept been beatific to added akin clandestine boarding schools. Paul was beatific to Mace-Kingsley Ranch, amid on 2,000 acreage in New Mexico, which was bankrupt in 2002.
Paul accustomed at Mace-Kingsley if he was thirteen, and backward for three and a bisected years. As he tells it, he underwent what sounds like a archetypal "boot camp" experience, complete with harder labor, bad food, boxy administration - all with a top amount tag, about $30,000 per year. The academy activated a adamant Scientology focus that abounding above acceptance now say served as both a apparatus of ascendancy and a anatomy of religious indoctrination.
The action began for all new acceptance with an IQ analysis and the Purification Rundown, which Paul says was accord to kids as adolescent as eight or nine years old. Afresh they were administered the Oxford Capacity Analysis, created by Scientologists in 1953. The analysis was advised to acquisition out the student's "tone," or affecting state, in alertness for auditing. Acceptance were audited circadian at the ranch. By the age of sixteen, Paul say, he'd developed so acclimated to the process, he'd ample out how to "trick" the E-meter: By actual calm abundant for no electrical allegation to register, he was about able to adumbrate a lot of of his abutting animosity from his auditors and his "case supervisor," who oversaw his progress.
But not always. "There are things they capital to know, and they'd just accumulate allurement until you assuredly told them," he says. "They'd get me to acquaint them about lies, or things that were bad, appropriate down to my thoughts - some of which were overts." So were some of his deeds. Masturbation is an apparent - anxiously banned in Scientology, as Hubbard believed that it can apathetic one's action to enlightenment. "It's not evil, just out-ethics," says Paul. "They'll dig it up in affair and acquaint you to stop because it's slowing you down."
Another apparent is homosexuality, which Hubbard believed was a anatomy of animal "deviance" best advised by therapy, or institutionalization. This appearance was consort by abounding psychiatrists of Hubbard's generation. Boilerplate psychiatry has afflicted its appearance aback the 1950s. Scientology as an academy takes no academic position on issues like gay marriage, but homosexuality, animal promiscuity or any added anatomy of "perversion" ranks low on Scientology's "tone scale," a annals of animal behavior Hubbard declared in his 1951 book Science of Survival: Prediction of Animal Behavior.
This book, according to Mike Rinder, is conceivably the a lot of important Scientology argument afterwards Dianetics. In it, Hubbard denounced about every animal convenance that doesn't anon chronicle to alliance and children. "Such humans should be taken from the association as rapidly as possible... for actuality is the akin of the bane of aeon and the abolition of ethics," he wrote of homosexuals. "No amusing adjustment will survive which does not abolish these humans from its midst."
In auditing, Scientologists are frequently asked about their animal thoughts or practices, decidedly in the appropriate auditing sessions alleged "security checks." This action requires a abbey affiliate to abode down any breach with the ethical code. Aegis checks are administered to every Scientologist on the Bridge, and decidedly to all OTs, who accept to be arrested every six months "to accomplish abiding they're appliance the tech correctly," as abbey admiral explain. In September, I received, through a source, a faxed archetype of the accepted security-check area for adults. Its questions awning "Have you anytime been circuitous in an abortion?" "Have you anytime accomplished sex with animals?" "Have you anytime accomplished sodomy?" "Have you anytime slept with a affiliate of a chase of addition color?" as able-bodied as "Have you anytime had any barbarous thoughts about L. Ron Hubbard?"
Paul resisted his aegis checks - he says he sometimes fell comatose during the sessions. But Sara, who says she went through months of "sec checks" afterwards deciding, at age fifteen, that she didn't wish to be a Scientologist any longer, says she was awful abashed by the process. At first, she says, attorneys at her abbey approved to "clear" her. She was affected to again attending up words in the concordance to accomplish abiding she blurred annihilation about Scientology. Afresh they gave her a aegis check. "For months I'm traveling to the abbey every night afterwards school, and I'm in this fucking basement for four hours a night, on the E-meter," she says. "They're allurement me questions about sex - every claimed catechism accepted to man." If she approved to leave, Sara adds, the auditors would physically block her aisle and force her aback in her chair. Admiral say this affected auditing is for the subjects' own good, as it adeptness be adverse if they were to leave a affair afore they were ready.
"Scientology has a believable account for aggregate they do - that's the ability of it," says Sara. "But accomplish no mistakes: Scientology is brainwashing."
Jeffrey Aylor was thirteen if He abutting the Sea Organization. Aloft in a Scientology ancestors in Los Angeles, he was at abbey one day if a Sea Org recruiter approached him. "What are you accomplishing with your life?" he asked the teen.
Jeffrey had no abstraction what to say. "I'm thirteen, I'm not accomplishing annihilation with my life," Jeffrey said. The recruiter asked him if he capital to "help" people. Jeffrey said, "Sure. What kid doesn't wish to advice people?"
Thus began Jeffrey's captivation into the deeply anguish apple of the Sea Org, area he would absorb the next seven years of his life. In that time, he would see beneath than ten movies, would rarely accept to music and never had sex. Admitting apparently account newspapers and magazines was accustomed - USA Today is awash aboveboard on Gold Abject - in convenance it was discouraged, forth with surfing the Internet and watching TV. Indeed, all acquaintance with the apple at ample was "entheta." "I never advised myself a Scientologist until I abutting the Sea Org," Jeffrey says.
Jeffrey's conduct began with a cossack affected accepted as the "Estates Project Force," or EPF. There, he abstruse to march, abode and accomplish chiral labor. Concrete plan is a key training abode for new recruits. Jeffrey's sister, for instance, went through the EPF if she was twelve and was affected to clamber through ducts that were roach and rat-infested. Like the TRs, this affectionate of work, Jeffrey explains, is meant to accession a person's "confront," enabling them to be added in ascendancy of their environment.
After the EPF, Jeffrey was accustomed a dejected shirt, dejected tie and dark-blue trousers, and beatific to plan as a agent at the American Saint Acropolis Alignment for airy training, on Scientology's all-embracing Hollywood campus. He was paid fifty dollars per anniversary and formed an boilerplate of fifteen hours per day, including an hour or two of auditing and added training. Home was a ample barracks-style allowance in a architecture area Jeffrey lived with about twenty added boys and men. In seven years, Jeffrey says, he saw his ancestors just a scattering of times. His abandoned chargeless time was the few hours he accustomed on Sunday mornings to do his laundry. Hubbard believed acerb in productivity, which he saw as awful ethical behavior. "We accolade assembly and up-statistics and amerce nonproduction and down-statistics," he wrote in Introduction to Scientology Ethics.
Eventually, Jeffrey activate himself on "PTS watch," ecology Sea Org associates who capital to leave the order. According to abbey officials, Sea Org associates can leave anytime they want. But in practice, the attitude is "the abandoned acumen you'd wish to leave is because you've done something wrong," says Jeffrey. This would alarm for a annular of "sec checks," which would abide throughout the "route out" process, which can yield up to a year. During that time, above Sea Org associates accept asserted, they are subjected to so abundant burden they about adjudge not to leave afterwards all.
To accomplish abiding no one would leave afore their avenue out was complete, Jeffrey would adumbration them: "I've been assigned to go and beddy-bye alfresco somebody's aperture - all night, for as abounding nights as it takes - on the floor, adjoin the door, so I could feel if they opened it. If they went to the bathroom, anyone would angle appropriate outside. Anyone is consistently there."
Some aberrant associates accept "disappeared" for connected periods of time, beatific to appropriate Scientology accessories accepted as the "Rehabilitation Project Force." Created by Hubbard in 1974, the RPF is declared by the abbey as a autonomous rehabilitation affairs alms a "second chance" to Sea Org associates who accept become bootless or accept absent from the church's codes. It involves accelerated concrete activity (at abbey facilities) and auditing and abstraction sessions to abode the individual's claimed problems. The action is accustomed a absolute circuit in abbey writings. "Personnel 'burnout' is not new to organizations," a column on Scientology's official Web website reads, in affiliation to the RPF, "but the abstraction of complete rehabilitation is."
Former Sea Org associates who've been through the affairs allegation that it is a anatomy of re-indoctrination, in which harder concrete activity and acute brainy abstraction are acclimated to breach a subject's will. Chuck Beatty, a above Sea Org member, spent seven years in the RPF accessories in Southern California, from 1996 to 2003, afterwards cogent a admiration to allege out adjoin the church. For this, he was accused of "disloyalty," a action calling for rehabilitation. "My abstraction was to go to the RPF for six or eight months and afresh avenue out," says Beatty. "I anticipation that was the atonement affair to do." In the RPF he was accustomed a "twin," or auditing partner, who was amenable for authoritative abiding he didn't escape. "It's a bastille system," he says, answer that all RPFers are watched twenty-four hours per day and prevented from accepting acquaintance with the alfresco world. "It's a affective bearings area you feel like you're betraying the accumulation if you try to leave."
Quiet and acclimatized by nature, Jeffrey never absent the ascendancy and adjustment of the Sea Org. "I was captivated up in work," he says. "And that's what I admired doing. And I anticipation I was allowance people." But if he became ill, his angle radically changed. For the aboriginal six years of his Sea Org service, Jeffrey had kept his asthma and added bloom issues in check. In the bounce of 2004, he began to advance astringent chest pains. By the summer, he was clumsy to work. By fall, he could about get out of bed.
Scientologists accept that a lot of illnesses are articles of a person's own analytic traumas - they are brought aloft themselves. Sea Org associates are promised medical affliction for any illness, but Jeffrey says that he accustomed little medical absorption or money with which to seek alfresco medical care. Instead, he was beatific to Acceptance counseling. If that didn't cure him, it was appropriate he acknowledgment to the EPF to echo his training.
Even while bedridden, "if I wasn't there blame somebody to yield me to a doctor ... it didn't happen," he says. Lying in bed one night, Jeffrey listened to a taped abode accustomed by L. Ron Hubbard, in which he fabricated his acclaimed account "If it isn't accurate for you, it isn't true." For Jeffrey, this began a analytic action that would eventually advance to his abrogation Scientology altogether. "Nobody can force Scientology aloft you, but that is absolutely what was accident to me," he says.
And so, one day abide February, he asked for some time off to see a doctor. Afresh he alleged his mother and asked her to appear get him. If she accustomed the next morning, Jeffrey larboard his keys and his Sea Alignment ID agenda abaft on his bed. Then, demography abandoned his clothes, he left.
Now twenty-three, Jeffrey lives in a baby abundance boondocks added than four hours from Los Angeles. Aback his "escape," as he call, it from the Sea Org. he has not alternate to the church. He has never appear out about his experiences, which he still insists "weren't all that bad." But because he larboard the Sea Org afterwards permission, he has been declared suppressive. Soon, he believes, his ancestors still in the abbey will accept annihilation added to do with him.
The adjustment of disconnection, alleged a "declare," is issued on a section of gold-colored block accepted as a "goldenrod". This certificate proclaims the suppressive person's name, as able-bodied as his or her "crime". According to one acquaintance of Jeffrey's mother who has apprehend his declare, Jeffrey's crimes are vague, but every Scientologist who sees it will accept its point.
"This acknowledge is a admonishing to Jeffrey's accompany in the Sea Org," this woman, who is still a affiliate of the church, explains. "It's adage to them, 'See this kid, he larboard afterwards permission. This is what happened to him. Don't you accomplish the aforementioned mistake.'"
During the time I was researching this piece, I accustomed a bulk of e-mails from several of the Scientologists I had interviewed. A lot of were still technically associates of the abbey in acceptable standing; abreast they had developed disillusioned and accept appear about their animosity for the aboriginal time in this article. All of the adolescent humans mentioned in this story, save Natalie, are advised by the abbey bureaucracy to be Abeyant Agitation Sources. But abounding accept amorphous to anguish they will be declared Suppressive Persons.
Their e-mails bidding their additional thoughts and their fears.
"Please, let me apperceive what you will be autograph in the story," wrote one adolescent woman. "I just wish to accomplish abiding that humans will not be able to apprehend it and amount out who I am. I apperceive my mom will be reading."
"The abbey is a big, alarming deal," wrote another. "My [initial] attitude was if this advice could save just one getting the money, affliction and affective control, afresh all would be account it. [But] I'm abashed of what could happen."
"I'm about two abnormal abroad from accident my accomplished family, and if that adventure comes out with my getting in it, I will," wrote a third. "I'm terrified. Please, please, amuse ... if it's not too late. . . advice me accumulate my family."
One decidedly agitated e-mail accustomed anon afore this adventure was published. It came from a adolescent Scientologist with whom I had corresponded several times in the advance of three or four months. If we aboriginal met, she batten foolishly and angrily about the appulse of the abbey on herself and those abutting to her.
"Please absolve me," she wrote. "The huge majority of things I told you were lies. Conceivably I don't like Scientology. True. But what I do apperceive is that I was built-in with the ancestors I was built-in with, and I adulation them. Don't ask me to breach down the foundation of their lives." Like about every adolescent getting mentioned in this piece, this woman was accustomed a pseudonym to assure her identity, and her family's. But it wasn't enough, she decided. "This is my life. ... Accept what I acquaint you now for fact: I will not approve or aback up a abandoned affair I said.
"I'm so sorry," she concluded. "I achievement you accept that anybody I adulation is awfully important to me, and I am accommodating to attending above their behavior in adjustment to accumulate them around. I will explain in added detail, perhaps, some added day."
From The Archives Affair 995: Advance 9, 2006
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