Inside Scientology
By JANET REITMAN
Introduction:
The World's Fastest-Growing Religion
The limestone and granite Church of Scientology in
midtown Manhattan is located just northwest of Times Square, at 227 West 46th
Street. Blending in seamlessly amid Broadway theaters, restaurants, and hotels,
the place is very easy to miss, though it is seven stories tall and marked with
a large metal awning proclaiming scientology in gold letters. At various times
during the year, clusters of attractive young men and women are posted on
nearby street corners, where they offer free "stress tests" or hand
out fliers. Ranging in age from the late teens to the early twenties, they are
dressed as conservatively as young bank executives.
On a hot July morning several years ago, I was
approached by one of these clear-eyed young men. "Hi!" he said, with
a smile. "Do you have a minute?" He introduced himself as Emmett.
"We're showing a film down the street," he said, casually pulling a
glossy, postcard-sized flier from the stack he held in his hand. "It's
about Dianetics — ever heard of it?"
I looked at the handout, which featured a large,
exploding volcano, instantly familiar from the Dianetics commercials that
played on local television stations when I was a teenager. The flier, which
invited me to come and see the free introductory film ("Showing Now! Bring
Your Friends!"), proclaimed that Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental
Health was "the most popular book on the mind ever written" and a
bestseller for over fifty years, with "over 25 million copies in
circulation in 50 languages on Earth."
"Okay," I said.
"Great!" A huge grin spread across
Emmett's face. He escorted me across the street.
Inside the church, two young women in long skirts
stood by the reception desk. Like Emmett, they seemed to be about twenty, had
blond hair, and looked freshly scrubbed, reminding me of Mormon missionaries.
They led me down a set of marble steps, and we entered the main lobby, a large
glossy space with lighting that bathed everything in a pinkish-golden glow.
Aside from my guides and me, it was completely empty.
The room appeared to be set up as a Scientology
museum. Books by Scientology's founder L. Ron Hubbard — more than fifty of them
— lined the walls, as did black-and-white photos of the man, all presenting him
as a robust patriarch with graying sideburns and a benevolent smile, dressed in
a sports jacket and ascot.
But far more prominent than Hubbard was Tom Cruise.
Projected on a large video panel, his image dominated the space: earnest,
handsome, dressed in a black turtleneck, looking directly into a camera and
apparently giving a testimonial to the faith. What Cruise was actually saying,
however, I couldn't tell. His words were almost completely drowned out by the
sound of myriad other videos playing simultaneously nearby. The Church of
Scientology, unlike other houses of worship, did not invite somber reflection
on its beliefs but rather offered a technological wonderland: music videos
promoting the group's Youth for Human Rights campaign played alongside
infomercials extolling the wonders of Dianetics, which appeared alongside
videos and documentary-style reports on the great work of Scientology's
"volunteer ministers" at Ground Zero, which played next to a video of
Tom Cruise receiving an award for outstanding service.
I was escorted into a small screening room to watch
the free introductory film. This turned out to be a high-quality, rather long
infomercial featuring a cast of ostensibly real people who explained how
Dianetics had changed their lives and improved their health dramatically,
curing them of ailments ranging from brain cancer to depression. It was fifteen
minutes of fantastic and totally outlandish claims, and yet each testimonial
was presented in such a reasonable way that in spite of myself, I felt kind of
hopeful.
After the film, a woman came into the screening
room and told me that she'd like me to fill out a questionnaire. Laurie, as she
introduced herself, was a matronly woman of about fifty. She began her pitch
gently. "Tell me about yourself," she said. "What made you
interested in Scientology?"
Over the next hour or so, Laurie asked me a series
of questions: Was I married? Was I happy? What were my goals? Did I feel like I
was living up to my potential? She exuded warmth and was resolutely
nonaggressive. And to my amazement, I began to open up to her, telling her
about my relationship with my boyfriend and my desire to quit smoking.
In response, Laurie delivered a soft sell for
Scientology's "introductory package": a four-hour seminar and twelve
hours of Dianetics auditing, a form of counseling that cost $50. "You
don't have to do it," Laurie said. "It's just something I get the
feeling might help you." She patted my arm.
Laurie also had me take the two-hundred-question
Oxford Capacity Analysis, Scientology's well-known personality test, which
poses such questions as "Do you often sing or whistle just for the fun of
it?" and "Do you sometimes feel that your age is against you (too
young or too old)?" After looking at my test, Laurie told me that I had
"blocks" in communication but was basically confident, though I did
seem to suffer from nonspecific anxiety. "These are all things
we can help you with," she said, and smiled. "It's really such a good
thing you came in," she added, as she took my credit card. "You'll
see."
On Monday, I returned to the church to begin my $50
package. My partner in auditing was named David. Sitting down across from me,
he asked me to "relive" a moment of physical pain. "Don't choose
something that's too stressful," he suggested.
I closed my eyes and concentrated, but try as I
might, I could not relive much of anything. After fifteen minutes, I gave up.
Waiting just outside the room was Jane, a
Scientology registrar who told me she was now handling my "case." A
redhead dressed in jeans and a lightweight blouse, she asked me how it went.
"I'm not sure this is for me," I told her.
"A lot of people feel that way when they first
start auditing; it's not unusual," Jane said soothingly, all the while
steering me away from the exit. She walked me down a long hall and into her
office, where, on her desk, lay the results of my personality test. Jane
studied them a bit. "What you need is something more personal," she
said. She suggested Life Repair, a $2,000 package of one-on-one private
auditing sessions, which she said would help me handle my everyday problems.
Then, after I finished Life Repair, which could take a month or so, I could get
right to The Bridge to Total Freedom, which, Jane explained, was how people
really made gains, or had "wins," as she called them.
"How much do you think people spend on
psychotherapy?" Jane asked me. I replied that it varied: in New York,
$150–$250 could be standard for a forty-five-minute session. Auditing, she
said, was much cheaper. Auditing sessions were sold in 12.5-hour blocks, known
as intensives; one intensive, she said, cost $750 — half the price of therapy,
hour for hour. "It's worth it, I promise you," she said.
"I'll think about it," I told her.
Jane seemed disappointed. "We should get you
going as soon as possible," she said. "I really want you to have a
win."
Scientology — the term means "the study of
truth" — calls itself the "fastest-growing religion in the
world." Born in 1954, the group now claims millions of members in 165
different countries and eighty-five hundred Scientology churches, missions, and
outreach groups across the globe. Its holdings, which include real estate on
several continents, are widely assumed to be worth billions of dollars. Its
missionaries, known as "volunteer ministers," tour the developing
world and are sent, en masse, to deliver aid in familiar disaster zones such as
earthquake-ravaged Port-au-Prince or New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
Wherever large groups of people are circulating — in city centers, on street
corners, in subway stations, at shopping malls, and on college campuses — you
can find Scientologists offering free "stress tests" and distributing
leaflets. Like members of another homegrown American faith, the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints, Scientologists live in virtually every major city
in America and in numerous smaller cities and suburbs as well; they can be
found in every age group and vocation. Each year, according to the church's
estimates, fifty to sixty thousand people sign up for a Scientology course or
buy a book about the faith for the first time.
Take a look at these statistics, and you might
easily assume that Scientology is one of the most successful new religious
movements in America. Certainly it is among the most recognizable, thanks to
its most famous, not to mention outspoken, member, Tom Cruise. The creation of
the late science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology is considered by
some academics within the field of comparative religion to be one of the most
significant faiths born in the past century. But type the word Scientology into
Google, and it becomes immediately clear that it is also America's most
controversial religion. It has been referred to as a "cult," a
"dangerous cult," and an "evil cult." There are websites
declaring that "Scientology kills" and "Scientology lies."
Others are dedicated to exposing Scientology's "secret documents,"
its "secret teachings," and "what Scientology won't tell
you." On message boards, former members post stories about their
"escape" from the Church of Scientology, their "recovery"
from the Church of Scientology, and their "life after" Scientology.
It is a church that, over the past fifty years, has been the subject of more
than half a dozen wide-scale government investigations around the world, and
thousands of lawsuits, many of which center on its controversial doctrine and
practices. Scientology, as its critics point out, is unlike any other Western
religion in that it withholds key aspects of its central theology from all but
its most exalted followers. This would be akin to the Catholic Church telling
only a select number of the faithful that Jesus Christ died for their sins.
Whether or not Scientology is a
religion is a matter of enduring debate. In Germany, where the church has been
described as a "totalitarian" organization, Scientology has been
roundly condemned as a cult, and its members have been barred from holding
public office or even joining some political parties. In Great Britain,
Scientology is also viewed as something other than a religion, but it is
nonetheless protected by a statute that criminalizes hate speech and
threatening actions directed against religious groups (in May 2008, for
example, a fifteen-year-old boy was arrested in London for holding a picket
sign denouncing Scientology). Australia banned the practice of Scientology in
the 1960s but reversed this decision and recognized it as a religion in 1983;
yet one outspoken member of the Australian government, Senator Nick Xenophon,
has denounced Scientology as a "criminal organization." The French
Church of Scientology has been under investigation for more than a decade. In
October 2009, a French court found Scientology guilty of fraud and imposed a
fine of nearly a million dollars. But the judge stopped short of banning
Scientology from France, as the prosecution had requested. Scientology
celebrated this decision as a victory. "I don't think that's going to have
any lasting impact," the former inspector general of the Church of
Scientology, Marty Rathbun, told a Canadian radio interviewer, in response to
the verdict. The fine, he explained, was "like chump change" to the
church.
The United States, where Scientology was born and
where a majority of Scientologists live, has legitimized Scientology as a
religion and granted it all of the legal protections that such a status
confers, including tax exemption. But within the church itself, Scientology is
usually defined as an "applied religious philosophy" — a
"spiritual science" offering practical solutions to the problems of
everyday life. Within every individual, it asserts, is a happier, purer, better
self — a "perfect" self — waiting to be realized. Scientology claims
that this idealized self can be realized today, in real time, and what's more,
that this self can be godlike, immortal, and marked by supernatural powers. The
traditional religious bedrock — worship, God, love and compassion, even the
very concept of faith — is wholly absent from its precepts. And, unique among
modern religions, Scientology charges members for every service, book, and
course offered, promising greater and greater spiritual enlightenment with
every dollar spent. People don't "believe" in Scientology; they buy
into it.
This is a story about a global spiritual enterprise
that trades in a product called "spiritual freedom." It is, on many
levels, a story about the buying and selling of self-betterment: an elusive but
essentially American concept that has never been more in demand than it is
today. As far back as the mid-nineteenth century, when a New England hypnotist
named Phineas Quimby popularized a form of healing he called "mind
cure," Americans have yearned for a quick fix for their physical,
psychological, and spiritual imperfections. The Church of Scientology is a
shape-shifting and powerful organization that promises that fix.
The Scientologists you will read about in these
pages are members, or former members, of a wealthy and mysterious organization
whose goal, like that of most religions, is to improve human society. The
church also aspires to greatly increase its global footprint and, finally, to
make money, though members will never say this specifically. Rather, if you
were to ask, they would tell you that they want to "clear the planet"
— to remove, in a literal sense, the stain of war, insanity, and disease from
the world — which, like all worthwhile endeavors, comes at a cost.
The church claims that more than half of its
members were introduced to Scientology through family or friends. Indeed, at
this point in its development, many current members are second- or even third-generation
Scientologists. For example, the actress Priscilla Presley, who joined
Scientology in the 1970s, raised her daughter, Lisa Marie, in the church; the
British writer and graphic novelist Neil Gaiman, who currently maintains that
he is not a practicing Scientologist, was nonetheless brought up in
Scientology, at the church's worldwide headquarters. Other famous
second-generation Scientologists include the actors Juliette Lewis, Elizabeth
Moss, Giovanni Ribisi, and Danny Masterson, who introduced the faith to his
girlfriend, the model Bijou Phillips, and to his former costar on That
Seventies Show, Lauren Prepon. Sky Dayton, the founder of Earthlink, one of the
first Internet service providers, also grew up in Scientology, as did the
church's current spokesman, Tommy Davis, the son of the actress and longtime
Scientologist Anne Archer.
But the vast majority of Scientologists are people
you have never heard of. Many work in various parts of the entertainment
industry, but still more of them write, teach, create art, build houses, trade
stock, manage hedge funds, own businesses, and invent new forms of technology.
They run schools and drug rehabilitation programs, work in prisons and inner
cities, and lobby Congress and federal regulators. Roughly a quarter of them,
according to church figures, were raised Catholic, another quarter Protestant;
the rest come from Jewish, Mormon, Hindu, and even Muslim backgrounds. As for
education, some Scientologists hold professional or advanced degrees; others
are high school graduates; some never finished school.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from INSIDE SCIENTOLOGY by Janet Reitman.
Copyright © 2011 by Janet Reitman. Excerpted by permission of HOUGHTON MIFFLIN
HARCOURT. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or
reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Excerpts are
provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this
web site.
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