Welcome to the Scientology Works

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In 1968 I was a seventeen year old kid still wet behind the years, living near downtown Los Angeles in a seven dollar a week room at The Garland Hotel, a rundown old claptrap that had evidently been associated with the mob during prohibition. I spent my time running up and down 7th Street, mainly visiting the nearby pawnbroker, where I could pawn my portable typewriter when I needed eating money until payday, and the discount store across from MacArthur's Park, where I could find blue jeans for about three bucks a pair. I took my meals at a nearby Greek owned restaurant where meat loaf dinner went for a buck forty.

Not long after moving into the neighborhood, I started hanging-out at the nearby LA Org for The Church of Scientology, after a clean-cut, freshly scrubbed young man gave me an invitation to attend an introductory lecture and take a free personality test. After the lecture, the theme of which seemed to be the mantra “Scientology works,” we were herded, one by one, to speak to someone who evaluated our test.

Those who know me now might be surprised to learn that the test indicated there were several areas in my personality that needed improvement. The young woman who evaluated the test's results explained that the best way for me to begin working on my issues was to take their “communication's course.” I signed-up, but wasn't allowed to take the course because I was a minor and couldn't get parental consent.

But that's when I began hanging-out at the LA Org.

The workers at the org sort of adopted me and made me feel welcome and comfortable when I would drop by, which was nearly every day. I would pick their brains about the inner workings of Scientology and read everything I could find on the subject. Without taking a single course or receiving any auditing, I was indoctrinated into the world of L. Ron Hubbard's sci-fi version of Shambala.

Science-fiction was the operative word. Hubbard, Scientology's founder and all powerful patriarch, had been a barely successful sci-fi writer for the pulps before he reincarnated as the pseudo high-tech guru of Dianetics and Scientology. In many ways, if someone were to pattern a religion on Star Trek or Star Wars, it would probably turn-out to be something very much like Hubbard's religion. The organization even had their own earth bound version of Star Fleet, Sea Org, whose members had signed a billion year contract, evidently with the intent of fulfilling the terms through successive lifetimes.

Slowly, I came to identify myself as a Scientologist. When I wasn't at my job, taking orders on the speaker phone at Delores' Drive-In, I was at the org volunteering to perform the drudge tasks that nobody had the time to do but which needed to be done, like addressing envelopes for mass mailings.

Every afternoon four or five of the younger staff members and myself would walk over to a small coffee shop on Alvarado Street to watch reruns of Star Trek on a black and white television with rabbit ears. To my Scientologist friends, the tales of the Enterprise weren't a look at a possible future, but a somewhat accurate portrayal of a far distant past, a history of the time before the great galactic war had reduced us to the pitiful beings we've become. They thought they were paving the way for the time when Sea Org would become Space Org and the Starship Hubbard could “boldly go where no man has gone before.”

Eventually, I took the night watch job. For the incredible salary of $25 weekly, almost a living wage in those days, I would sit overnight at the receptionist's desk to answer the phones and kept an eye on the place. That gave me time to do a lot of thinking about the enormous amounts of money that people spent to go through the Scientology process. In 1968, it cost something over $2,000 to reach the state of “clear,” which was then the end-all and be-all of Scientology processing.

One morning after ending my shift I marched over to the ethics office and spoke with the Ethics Officer, a Scientology cop who had the job of enforcing Ethics Orders, the Scientology version of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. I told him that I was quitting my job and ending my association with the organization.

“Scientology's stupid,” I told him – or words to that effect. “For what you pay to go clear, you could buy a new car.” At seventeen, having a car was about the most important goal in the world.

A few days later I received an envelope in the mail from the local org. Inside was an Ethics Order, stating that I had been declared in the “condition of enemy” and fell under the “fair game act.” That meant that any Scientologist could steal from me or otherwise harm me without fearing an ethics reprisal. In other words, I had become a Scientology outlaw.

©Copyright 2003 by AlternativeApproaches.com

Since the demise of the Nixon White House, there probably hasn't been an organization on the planet as paranoid as The Church of Scientology. They literally think that everyone is out to get them. The governments of the world are intent on destroying them and wiping all vestiges of their organization off the earth. The press? According to Scientology, the only reason any reporter ever writes an article on them is to spread lies and deceit in a conspiracy to bring them to their knees. Even the average non-Scientologist person (a wog in Scientology terminology) is suspect until indoctrinated into the “truth” of Scientology.

Although the press likes to play on the organization's paranoia about outsiders as proof of the group's suspect intentions, Hubbard Incorporated actually has good reason to feel that the world is against them. Indeed, to this day, governments have gone to draconian measures to put them out of business, and there is much truth to their claim that the news media is seemingly incapable of presenting a fair and unbiased view of their organization. While the group is undoubtedly largely responsible for much of the negative attention they receive, personal experience tells me that Scientology is not much better or worse than most religious organizations.

Scientology's legal problems began in the early 1950s, almost immediately after the group came into existence as an offshoot of Dianetics, which claimed to be the definitive study of the human mind. Because Dianetics claimed that 100% of all illnesses are psychosomatic and that Dianetic counseling could cure all diseases, the group immediately evoked the ire of the AMA, who saw Dianetics as the practice of medicine without a license. It also didn't help that Hubbard saw fit to take-on the entire psychiatric community (and the CIA) for practicing mind control.

By the late 1950s, things started coming to a head. It began when a U.S. Marshall, spurred by a tip from a psychiatrist, raided Scientology's Washington, D.C. headquarters to confiscate drugs which turned-out to be a combination of vitamin B1, vitamin C, niacinamide and calcium. After that, the FDA decided to go after the church for practicing medicine without a license, and planted agent Taylor Quinn into the organization to work undercover to gather evidence. That investigation also went nowhere, as the agent was required to sign a contract that stated that he understood that Dianetics and Scientology could not cure diseases, proving that they weren't making unsubstantiated medical claims.

This wasn't enough to stop the United States government, however. On January 4, 1963, a group consisting of U.S. Marshals, deputized longshoremen and armed police again raided Scientology's Washington, DC offices. This time the feds confiscated over one hundred fifty E-Meters (basically simple and overpriced ohm meters connected to tin cans which are used in Scientology's counseling sessions), claiming them to be unlicensed medical devices. They also carted-off over 4,000 books and pamphlets.

By themselves, these actions were probably enough to establish a siege mentality within the Scientology organization. Unfortunately, the government's comedy of errors against the organization didn't stop there, and their next action would have tragic consequences.

Shortly after the D.C. raid, the FDA was contacted by Seattle resident Russell Johnson, who had a complaint against “the practices of a Dr. William Fisk who operates as the Church of Scientology.” He claimed that Fisk, who was Scientology's Executive Director in Seattle, was trying to seduce his wife.

According to information gathered under the Freedom of Information Act, the FDA saw this as a golden opportunity and enlisted Johnson to infiltrate the group's Seattle offices to gather information. Evidently, after joining Scientology and subsequently reporting to his FDA bosses, Johnson was asked to return to gather more information. He did this and more. On September 10, 1963, he entered the Seattle church and shot and killed Fisk. The murder was witnessed by a roomful of Scientologists.

At the same time that Scientology was battling the FDA, they were also coming under fire from the IRS, who were denying the church tax exempt status, claiming that the organization (which charges thousands of dollars for a form of counseling called “auditing”) was using religion as a legal maneuver to avoid paying taxes.

This eventually led Hubbard to make some interesting changes within the organization to convince the IRS, and the courts, to accept Scientology's religious status. Staff members became “ministers,” auditing became “spiritual counseling,” and fees for auditing and other services became “fixed donations.”

Even though a Federal Appeals Court ruled in 1969 that Scientology was a constitutionally protected religion, the IRS didn't give-up their claim against the church until 1993, when they finally granted the organization 501(c)(3) status. It's been reported that this was part of a “secret” deal, under which The Church of Scientology dropped nearly 2,000 lawsuits against the IRS.

Scientology's problems with government regulators have not been confined to the USA. For years, authorities in England, Canada and Australia attempted to ban the religion in their countries. At present, France and Germany are attempting to curtail the organizations activities.

©Copyright 2003 by AlternativeApproaches.com

In 1969, just weeks after the Church of Scientology declared me to be “an enemy to yourself and all of mankind,” I was told by a young and gangly ethics officer that my ethics order had been mysteriously canceled and that I'd been restored to a “condition of normal.” This opened the door for me to return to my old ways, spending most of my spare time hanging-out at the org making myself as useful as a seventeen year old kid could be.

Like any organization in the modern and post-modern era, Scientology was filled with pat phrases. One such phrase, heard often during the early evening hours when the org would fill-up with non-Scientologist “wogs,” was the mantra “Scientology works!” As mundane as this expression might be, it had the effect, after repeated exposure, of leading one to believe that, indeed, Scientology does work, even with no evidence to support the claim. Actually, the mantra should've begged the question, “How does Scientology work?”

When you are seventeen, everything under the sky is new, making it understandable that I didn't recognize the fact that there is nothing original about Scientology. Certainly there are some novel techniques, fresh ways to deal with old ideas, but the fundamentals of Scientology are as old as the Buddha and eastern philosophy.

L. Ron Hubbard never hid this fact and claimed that in his early life he'd traveled to the East where he was exposed to the ideas of Buddhism and yoga, freely admitting that some of these notions were incorporated into Scientology. What he never admitted was that Scientology also borrowed heavily from the occult, specifically from stolen secret documents from the Agape Lodge in Los Angeles of the OTO, magician Aleister Crowley's organization of Ceremonial Magick.

Indeed, it appears that Hubbard was a member of the OTO, as Frater X, in the 1940s and early 50s, and occult history doesn't paint him in a light that is in any way flattering. His time there was marked by many sexual indiscretions, as well as outright thievery. At one point, he managed to have the lodge's headquarters sold, then absconded with the money and took a yachting cruise around the world. Somewhere along the line he managed to purloin the top-secret psycho-sexual and magical techniques of the lodge, and we can only assume that some of this material eventually became incorporated into Scientology.

The existence of Frater X and his activities has been well documented by occult historians since the 50s, even though his identity was not known. It was rumored that he had lived a long life of luxury from the misuses of the magical secrets that he had stolen, but his identity remained a mystery until the late 1980s, when several sources (most notably E. E. Rehmus in “The Magician's Dictionary”) identified the mysterious Frater X as Hubbard.

Not long after leaving the OTO, Hubbard founded Dianetics, the non-religious precursor to Scientology. Through research, Hubbard “discovered” that human beings have two minds, the conscious “analytical mind” and the unconscious “reactive mind” or “bank.” According to Dianetics, the reactive mind, a stimulus-response mechanism, is the source of all of humankind's ills, mainly because of the “engrams” stored there.

Engrams, it seems, are moments of pain and trauma that have been stored in the unconscious bank. Since they are stored in the reactive mind, and can be triggered by a number of stimuli unknown to the individual, with unwanted and potentially disastrous results, discovering and clearing these engrams is the most important step for returning the individual to complete health.

For this purpose, Hubbard developed a procedure called auditing, which utilizes a trained counselor (auditor) using an E-meter, a simple ohm meter dressed-up to look like a high tech gadget. During an auditing session, the person being audited holds tin cans connected to the E-meter in each hand, while the auditor directs the person to painful or traumatic incidents which show a “charge” on the meter. The person is then encouraged by the auditor to relive the incident in minute detail, over and over again, until the “charge” is removed.

In the days of Dianetics, auditors were trained to then find “earlier similar” engrams until the first, or “basic basic” engram was found. When this first engram had been cleaned, the person was said to be “clear” and returned to a perfect, healthy state. In those days, the search for the basic engram was limited the time of conception, and natal engrams were the goal of most early Dianetics sessions. This began to be problematic, however, as many “pre-clears” were finding the base engram in what they claimed to be past-lives.

By this time, Hubbard was already beginning to run into legal troubles concerning his fantastic claims for Dianetics (most notably that it could cure all disease) and was needing to find an explanation for the fact that Dianetics didn't always work. He also needed to answer independent researchers who were repudiating his work.

He found the answer to all of his problems in the guise of spirituality, and thus was Scientology born.

©Copyright 2003 by AlternativeApproaches.com

In October, 1969 I obtained a “Youth Fare” card from TWA, which allowed me to fly “standby” for half price. Within a week or so, I raised eighty-five bucks and, in a single afternoon, pawned and sold nearly all of my belongings from my little room at the Garland Hotel. I packed my big, ugly orange suitcase with a few changes of clothes, made it uncomfortably heavy with a stack of record albums I couldn't bear to lose, then threw-in the manuscript for the “great American novel” I was writing. At ten o'clock that night I was onboard a half-empty Boeing 707 for the red-eye from LAX to New York's La Guardia.

As a seventeen year old kid who'd oft depended on the kindness of strangers, I was in no way prepared for the general unfriendliness of the city. I'd arrived with about fifteen dollars in my pocket, enough to get a room for a week and a couple of meals in LA, but not even enough for a room for the night in Manhattan, even in '69. Travelers Aid refused their famous help, telling me outright that they thought I was a fraud. I finally ended-up at Scientology's offices, which took up the entire second floor of the Martinique Hotel at 32nd and Broadway, where I found a young couple willing to offer couch space at their small west side apartment.

Scientology's New York offices were much different from the LA Org. Although LA was a headquarters of sorts for Hubbard's US operations, the atmosphere there had been casual and laid-back. The New York Org, a mere regional office in the scheme of things, was a bee hive of activity, where everyone was always busy and where a businesslike atmosphere prevailed. About a year later I would find myself at the church's Toronto Org, which was much like New York, but not nearly so frantic.

Over the years, after I'd ended my association with Scientology and moved-on to other pursuits, I've thought much about the time I spent with the organization. My perspective on the group is obviously somewhat unique. I've never had any processing, so I haven't been “brainwashed” into Scientology. At the same time, I've had an inside peek at the daily operations at three of their offices, and developed close personal relationships with many who were going through the Scientology process.

Like many, I've also watched segments on network television that purport to be fair and accurate while painting a most unflattering picture of Hubbard & Company. I've read the tales, in “Time” and “Newsweek,” of Scietologists who were held captive when they tried to leave the group. The media (and the feds) would have you believe that Scientology has no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

I have no doubt that nearly everything I've seen in the mainstream press is true. That alone, however, is not as much of an indictment of Scientology as it may appear, for these accounts do not tell the entire truth and often apply shading to give sensible practices the appearance of dishonesty and deceit. Compounding this, Scientology's understandable mistrust of the press has led them to play a kind of shell game with reporters, lending support to the notion that the group is nothing more than a dangerous con.

In truth, Scientology is no better or worse than practically any other western religious organization. While it's true that the group sometimes looks like a cult, so do the Baptists, the Catholics and even the Episcopalians. All require that participants accept the official church view. All require that members let-go of cash to keep the organization solvent. All take an us-and-them view of the world. All have nurtured the occasional zealot willing to commit illegal acts “for the good of their members.” All have made claims that can't be substantiated.

None of this excuses Scientology's excesses, but only points-out that Scientology acts no differently from any other organized religion. True, they charge high rates for their services. Just as true, organized Christianity requires members to pledge ten percent of their income to the church, which is $3,000 a year for a family with an average income or $30,000 over a ten year period – hardly chicken scratch. Yes, Scientology claims that they are the only group that has all of the answers. So do the Baptists; so do the Catholics; so do the Episcopalians.

Which brings us to the real question: Does Scientology work? As with the Baptists, the Catholics, the Episcopalians, and expensive psycho-therapy, the answer is both yes and no. Some people are well-suited for Scientology and benefit greatly from undergoing it's processes. Others will find that Scientology does them little good and, like me, will move on to other pursuits. Again, this is no different than other religious groups, where some new members flourish and bloom while others find themselves withering on the vine.

In other words, if you try Scientology and it works for you – that's a good thing. If it doesn't – then move-on to something else. You're sure to find your path somewhere.

©Copyright 2003 by AlternativeApproaches.com