Reviewed: Going Clear - Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright
The two Ronnies.
BY JAMES HARKIN PUBLISHED 21 FEBRUARY 2013
L Ron Hubbard in 1959. Photograph: Getty Images
Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief
Lawrence Wright
Knopf, 448pp, $28.95
Lawrence Wright
Knopf, 448pp, $28.95
One summer, when I was 18 years old, I was walking along the seafront in Brighton when a skinny man in an ill-fitting suit approached me thumbing a copy of Dianetics. I hadn’t heard of the book or its author, L Ron Hubbard, but my new friend invited me to accompany him to a nearby office and fill out a questionnaire. When I answered his 200 questions, he came back with a graph whose line dipped in the middle to a precipitous fall. He’d once been a drug addict, he confided, and he felt sure that some similar weakness was holding me back. Did I have any idea what it could be?
Thanks to Lawrence Wright’s new book, I now know that what my adviser was up to was textbook Scientology: whetting my spiritual appetite by seeking out the particular “engrams” that were preying on my psyche and preventing me from achieving my real potential. Scientology, as Wright makes abundantly clear, is not religion as we know it; its scriptures are written not as weighty morals and metaphors but in the language of self-help and engineering, allied to a cosmology that is revealed in a glittering staircase of levels as the supplicant progresses through Hubbard’s oeuvre.
If I’d got as far as level three, I’d have known this: 75 million years ago, in a planetary system called the Galactic Confederacy, a cruel warlord called Xenu summoned an entire population of otherworldly beings called thetans and killed off the whole lot. The frozen bodies were immediately packed off to Teegeeack, which was then the name for earth, where they were hurled into volcanoes and nuked with hydrogen bombs. It’s these troubled, vacuum-packed spirits that are today the cause of most of our psychic ills. The goal of Scientology is to put believers on a path where they can eventually “go clear” of spiritual contaminants and find total freedom. If I’d progressed further up Scientology’s ladder of spiritual accomplishment, I might even have become a fully “operating thetan”, bouncing around in a jacuzzi with Tom Cruise.
Written out like this, it’s easy to make other people’s beliefs look ridiculous. The achievement of Wright’s book is to make us realise that Scientology’s wacky eschatology was never the most interesting part. Built on the foundations of a long article published two years ago in the New Yorker, Wright tells the story of the Church of Scientology through the career its late founder, Hubbard, and the testimony of a prominent dissident from the movement, Paul Haggis, who granted him a series of interviews.
Like most religious ideas, Scientology was a product of the cultural upheavals of its time. It arrived amid a flood of exotic new religions in the shifty, paranoid years immediately following the Second World War, at a time when many of the old ideologies had been shattered and there was a thirst for something new. Dianeticswas an immediate bestseller, one of the first of a new genre of self-help writing, but Hubbard wanted more. His approach started out as a kind of alternative psychotherapy but Hubbard bathed it in the rhetoric of science and engineering and when that seemed to pay dividends he tarted it up into a religion, too.
Eschewing the shouty provocations of some journalists who’ve tried to take on Scientology, Wright’s approach to the material is judicious and even-handed. What’s clear, according to Wright, is that from the beginning Hubbard was endowed with “an impressive capacity to summon others to join him on what was clearly a shaky enterprise”. It helped that he started out as a prolific writer of pulpy sci-fi novels, from which he seems to have learned a good deal about myth-making and self-mythology. Ingeniously, Hubbard developed his self-help potboiler into a series of veiled revelations, each of which promised greater abilities and increased spiritual power. “To keep a person on the Scientology path,” he once told one of his associates, “feed him a mystery sandwich.”
Wright takes refuge in deadpan. One disillusioned disciple “had long since come to the conclusion that Hubbard was not an operating thetan”. For an organisation that sets such store on its ability to help addicts, its own origins seem eerily bound up with hallucinogenic experiences. Discussing an early experiment with religious ritual, Wright tells us about a ceremony that, “likely aided by narcotics and hallucinogens, required Hubbard to channel the female deity of Babylon as Parsons performed the ‘invocation of wand with material basis on talisman’ – in other words, masturbating on a piece of parchment. He typically invoked twice a night.” The secrets of human existence appear to have been disclosed to Hubbard while he was at the dentist and under the influence of laughing gas.
The best criticism of old-time religion was that it offered empty solace to the impoverished masses but Scientology preys not on the poor but on the vain and the needy – actors and media types, for the most part. Scientologists are certainly impressively well organised when it comes to protecting their interests and the church is well known to be litigious when confronted by journalists. (Going Clear didn’t get past our plaintifffriendly libel laws: perhaps cowed by the threat of expensive libel suits, Wright’s UK publishers pulled out.) Yet after a long career in the church, Haggis’s very public falling out with Scientology for its mild homophobia – compared to most religions, Scientology is rather forward-thinking – seems overcooked and a little too righteous. As Wright cleverly suggests, the charge of “brainwashing” levelled against Scientology comes from the same paranoid B-movie thinking that gave us McCarthyism and the Red Menace.
As mainstream institutions crumble, it’s easy to have a go at the cultish organisations that are thriving on the margins but it’s more productive to ask why the rest of us feel so threatened by tightly knit groups with strong beliefs. Scientologists informally claim a membership of millions but, according to Wright, one former spokesperson for the organisation put membership of the Inter - national Association of Scientologists at only 30,000. The inflated network and numbers, as well as our grisly fascination, may only add to the mystique.
Was L Ron Hubbard God? Just in case, in each of the main Scientology offices around the world, they still keep a room ready for his second coming. Much of the intrigue in this enthralling book comes from Wright’s refusal to declare him either a con artist or a nut. If anything, he was simply a masterful storyteller. Hubbard was surely right, too, that any modern religion needs a powerful dose of narcissism and a series of secrets that are only available to the chosen few. His mistake, if there was one, was to let anyone ever find out what was inside the box.
James Harkin’s latest book is “Niche: the Missing Middle and Why Business Needs to Specialise to Survive” (Abacus, £9.99)
- James Fallows is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and has written for the magazine since the late 1970s. He has reported extensively from outside the United States, and once worked as President Carter's chief speechwriter. His latest book, China Airborne, was published in early May.
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On the Atlantic's Scientology Ad (and Aftermath)
I agree with (my former Atlantic colleague) Andrew Sullivan that the bright new age of "sponsored" online content creates all kinds of challenges for publications, readers, and even advertisers.
- On January 14, the Atlantic ran an unfortunate "sponsored content" / advertorial from the Church of Scientology lauding its leader David Miscavige (right), which is no longer available on line.
But his chronology today on his site, about the Atlantic's policy on these ads, is off in an understandable but significant way. You can read his sequence of "quotes for the day" here. For the record, the actual sequence was this:
- On January 14, the Atlantic ran an unfortunate "sponsored content" / advertorial from the Church of Scientology lauding its leader David Miscavige (right), which is no longer available on line.- Later that same day, the magazine pulled the ad and ran a statement that began "we screwed up."
- The next day, I posted an item (following one from Ta-Nehisi Coates) saying that the ad had been a mistake of both concept and execution. I also said, echoing the official statement, that we were starting a review of our ad policies in light of everything that was in flux in the online age.
- A few days later, in a morale-boosting internal email never meant for general circulation, the Atlantic's president Scott Havens said that ad had been a mistake of execution only. That note was immediately (and inevitably) leaked, and was widely and mistakenly taken as the result of the promised ad-policy review. In fact the review had barely started. Scott Havens was just trying to be nice to people on our staff.
- Havens's email is the one that Andrew has posted, juxtaposed with mine, to suggest disagreement in the ranks.
- The actual revised advertising policy, which is different from that internal email, is now available. If you're interested, here it is, the official "Advertising Guideline" memo that the magazine's business staff has produced in the wake of the Scientology flap. Two points of particular relevance to the discussion Andrew and Ben Smith of Buzzfeed have kicked off:
I think I understand it, though: there is a state of mind you get into when you have been battered relentlessly with unerring but false logic: if this, then this, then this other thing, then the next thing, and you see…you must admit this, and that means you were wrong all along. The floor slides away from you the way it does in the description Mrs Morton gave Berton Roueche of her bouts of labyrinthitis, a disease of the inner ear, and if you are not left alone the only way you can reassert the world as you know it is to bellow out the facts as you know them.
When you read the BBC Panorama journalist John Sweeney's new book about his time investigating Scientology for two Panorama episodes, one in 2007 and the other in 2010, The Church of Fear, you get the sense that this was his state of mind when he turned into - his term - the exploding tomato. This becomes clearer when you're shown the steps that led him there. Sweeney has apologized for his loss of control many times. Last night, speaking in East Grinstead, the town where Scientology has its UK headquarters, he gave us a small re-enactment. Up close, that was LOUD.
In an interview yesterday with The Register, Sweeney references a line I had forgotten, said to me in 1994 by former Scientologist Robert Vaughan Young to explain why he was glad he did not have to face the Internet during his time as a national spokesman for the Church of Scientology: "It's going to be to Scientology what Vietnam was to the US."
Eighteen years later, it seems clear he was right.
On Sweeney's 2010 Panorama, The Secrets of Scientology, the actor Larry Anderson, explains that his 33 years in Scientology began to end when he decided to break with CoS policy to go online and see what critics said about it. What he found was the secret documents at the heart of the conflict described in my 1995 Wired piece, whose reverberations set the framework for the copyright-related notice and takedown rules still in effect today. These "OT III" materials outline the beliefs you only learn hundreds of thousands of dollars into the practice of Scientology: the story of Xenu.
The OT III - for Operating Thetan, level III - documents escaped total Scientology control when they became an exhibit in Lawrence Wollersheim's 1980 suit against the CoS for damages after leaving the organization. Then came the Internet, which for the first time allowed former and disaffected Scientologists to find each other and share their stories. In 1994, the "Operating Thetan" documents made their appearance on the Usenet newsgroup alt.religion.scientology. When their publication brought legal and law enforcement attacks, copies spread more and more widely. The CoS was about as successful in keeping them offline as the RIAA and MPAA: today, they're not only on Usenet and the Web but readily accessible on your favorite torrent site, and there are summaries on Wikipedia, About.com, and, well, everywhere.
In 1994, a former Scientologist called the CoS "bait and switch", arguing that if people realized they were joining a belief system involving billion-year-old space aliens they would never sign up. This was why the alt.religion.scientology dissidents were so intent on getting the "secret scriptures" out in public: break the CoS's rigid control over that information and you break an important element of the recruiting mechanism. In the 1970s, a campus recruiter could invite students to an introductory meeting confident that they would know very little about the organization. Today's students have found Scientology's history, controversies, and belief system on their phones before he's finished his opening sentence. If China can't entirely insulate its population from the Internet, what chance does Scientology have?
They can still try, and some will let them. In the video clip linked above, Sweeney says the CoS told him it discourages members from accessing outside media because they are "merchants of chaos". In his book, he quotes from celebrity interviews given him for his 2007 Panorama,Scientology and Me that he was not allowed to broadcast. (Later, the CoS included excerpts from those same interviews in its crossfire documentary, Panorama Exposed, enabling the BBC to use those bits in 2010.) In Sweeney's account of these interviews, Kirstie Alley describes herself as "a little bit stupid on the Internet" and says she doesn't use it; Leah Remini says, "I don't go on the Internet".
By this time, Scientology's innermost beliefs are probably better understood and better known by those *outside* the group than those inside it. Because: until you have reached (at considerable expense) the OT III stage of studying Scientology, the core of Scientology beliefs is not disclosed to you. The reason, Hubbard wrote in 1967, is that exposure to these powerful secrets without proper preparation will send you insane, then kill you. The blank stares of Scientologists you ask about Xenu may simply mean they really don't know yet.
"We'll just run the SPs [Suppressive Persons] right off the system. It will be quite simple," Elaine Siegel, then a member of the Office of Special Affairs International, wrote to Scientologists online in 1994. Famous last words.
Technorati tags: Scientology Panorama BBC John Sweeney
- Havens's email is the one that Andrew has posted, juxtaposed with mine, to suggest disagreement in the ranks.
- The actual revised advertising policy, which is different from that internal email, is now available. If you're interested, here it is, the official "Advertising Guideline" memo that the magazine's business staff has produced in the wake of the Scientology flap. Two points of particular relevance to the discussion Andrew and Ben Smith of Buzzfeed have kicked off:
- The Atlantic will not allow any relationship with an advertiser to compromise The Atlantic's editorial integrity.
- All advertising content must be clearly distinguishable from editorial content. To that end, The Atlantic will label an advertisement with the word "Advertisement" when, in its opinion, this is necessary to make clear the distinction between editorial material and advertising.
net.wars: Merchants of chaos
by Wendy M Grossman | posted on 22 February 2013
Somehow, I managed to miss the exploding tomato.
I think I understand it, though: there is a state of mind you get into when you have been battered relentlessly with unerring but false logic: if this, then this, then this other thing, then the next thing, and you see…you must admit this, and that means you were wrong all along. The floor slides away from you the way it does in the description Mrs Morton gave Berton Roueche of her bouts of labyrinthitis, a disease of the inner ear, and if you are not left alone the only way you can reassert the world as you know it is to bellow out the facts as you know them.When you read the BBC Panorama journalist John Sweeney's new book about his time investigating Scientology for two Panorama episodes, one in 2007 and the other in 2010, The Church of Fear, you get the sense that this was his state of mind when he turned into - his term - the exploding tomato. This becomes clearer when you're shown the steps that led him there. Sweeney has apologized for his loss of control many times. Last night, speaking in East Grinstead, the town where Scientology has its UK headquarters, he gave us a small re-enactment. Up close, that was LOUD.
In an interview yesterday with The Register, Sweeney references a line I had forgotten, said to me in 1994 by former Scientologist Robert Vaughan Young to explain why he was glad he did not have to face the Internet during his time as a national spokesman for the Church of Scientology: "It's going to be to Scientology what Vietnam was to the US."
Eighteen years later, it seems clear he was right.
On Sweeney's 2010 Panorama, The Secrets of Scientology, the actor Larry Anderson, explains that his 33 years in Scientology began to end when he decided to break with CoS policy to go online and see what critics said about it. What he found was the secret documents at the heart of the conflict described in my 1995 Wired piece, whose reverberations set the framework for the copyright-related notice and takedown rules still in effect today. These "OT III" materials outline the beliefs you only learn hundreds of thousands of dollars into the practice of Scientology: the story of Xenu.
The OT III - for Operating Thetan, level III - documents escaped total Scientology control when they became an exhibit in Lawrence Wollersheim's 1980 suit against the CoS for damages after leaving the organization. Then came the Internet, which for the first time allowed former and disaffected Scientologists to find each other and share their stories. In 1994, the "Operating Thetan" documents made their appearance on the Usenet newsgroup alt.religion.scientology. When their publication brought legal and law enforcement attacks, copies spread more and more widely. The CoS was about as successful in keeping them offline as the RIAA and MPAA: today, they're not only on Usenet and the Web but readily accessible on your favorite torrent site, and there are summaries on Wikipedia, About.com, and, well, everywhere.
In 1994, a former Scientologist called the CoS "bait and switch", arguing that if people realized they were joining a belief system involving billion-year-old space aliens they would never sign up. This was why the alt.religion.scientology dissidents were so intent on getting the "secret scriptures" out in public: break the CoS's rigid control over that information and you break an important element of the recruiting mechanism. In the 1970s, a campus recruiter could invite students to an introductory meeting confident that they would know very little about the organization. Today's students have found Scientology's history, controversies, and belief system on their phones before he's finished his opening sentence. If China can't entirely insulate its population from the Internet, what chance does Scientology have?
They can still try, and some will let them. In the video clip linked above, Sweeney says the CoS told him it discourages members from accessing outside media because they are "merchants of chaos". In his book, he quotes from celebrity interviews given him for his 2007 Panorama,Scientology and Me that he was not allowed to broadcast. (Later, the CoS included excerpts from those same interviews in its crossfire documentary, Panorama Exposed, enabling the BBC to use those bits in 2010.) In Sweeney's account of these interviews, Kirstie Alley describes herself as "a little bit stupid on the Internet" and says she doesn't use it; Leah Remini says, "I don't go on the Internet".
By this time, Scientology's innermost beliefs are probably better understood and better known by those *outside* the group than those inside it. Because: until you have reached (at considerable expense) the OT III stage of studying Scientology, the core of Scientology beliefs is not disclosed to you. The reason, Hubbard wrote in 1967, is that exposure to these powerful secrets without proper preparation will send you insane, then kill you. The blank stares of Scientologists you ask about Xenu may simply mean they really don't know yet.
"We'll just run the SPs [Suppressive Persons] right off the system. It will be quite simple," Elaine Siegel, then a member of the Office of Special Affairs International, wrote to Scientologists online in 1994. Famous last words.
Technorati tags: Scientology Panorama BBC John Sweeney
Wendy M. Grossman’s Web site has an extensive archive of her books, articles, and music, and an archive of all the earlier columns in this series. Readers are welcome to post here, at net.wars home, follow on Twitter or send email to netwars(at) skeptic.demon.co.uk (but please turn off HTML).
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