Inside Scientology Part 3

A few darker exemplars existed as well. Charles Manson, for one, studied Scientology in prison in the early 1960s, years before committing the Tate-l.a.b.i.anca murders, and would later go on to use some of its techniques on his followers. But he was the exception. Scientology was geared not toward the dropouts and runaway youths who panhandled in the Haight or caught steamers to Morocco, but toward kids like Jeff Hawkins, who were idealistic and eager for social change, and who, as Jeff would say, were "looking for something that made sense."

And Scientology, it seemed to many young people, did. It was not a "cult" insofar as it did not require separation from mainstream society, nor from families-though it encouraged its acolytes to "disconnect" from those who were critical of Scientology. But it presented itself as a movement of people who were deeply engaged with the world. Parents were not necessarily the enemy; they were potential converts. The church encouraged its young members to connect with their families, devising special drills and other technology to help members repair fractured relations.h.i.+ps and communicate their new beliefs. For those whose parents were hostile to Scientology, or to its costs-in 1968, as Jeff recalled, an introductory Scientology course package cost around $1,000; auditing, also sold in packages, began at roughly $175 for five hours-the church produced pamphlets and ca.s.sette tapes to better explain Scientology's beliefs and practices and to present Scientology in a positive light.

Jeff had always been close to his mother, who approved of his interest in Scientology. When it came to the cost, he paid the fees; as a graphic designer, he had no problem affording them. Besides, as he saw it, the courses were educational. "These weren't someone's dusty old theories; they were 'technology,'" he said. "I thought what I was learning was science."

The first one Jeff took was called the Communications Course, which promised to help him become more comfortable in social situations. It consisted of a series of drills known as TRs, short for Training Routines, that students were told were used to train Scientology auditors. The drills were printed on white paper in red ink and bore the official-sounding t.i.tle "Technical Bulletin." The first TR involved closing your eyes and sitting in a chair, sometimes for hours. The second drill involved sitting across from a partner for an hour or two and staring at the person, immobile. A third TR, known as "bull-bait," required students to tease, joke with, or otherwise try to distract their partner, who had to maintain a straight face. Jeff's partner was a pretty girl; to his surprise, he seemed to have no trouble talking to her after a few practice drills-he had even made her laugh.

But the most stunning result of the TRs was the sense of peace that washed over Jeff whenever he practiced them. It was meditative, and at times the feeling was so all-encompa.s.sing it seemed he had left his body. He told the course supervisor, who smiled. This was a common experience in Scientology, he said: it was called "exteriorization." As Jeff advanced and gained more awareness in Scientology, the supervisor said, he would be able to leave and return to his body at will.

"It all seemed so unreal-I was completely electrified," Jeff said. Back in the Sierra Madre Canyon, he began talking up Scientology to his girlfriend, Dixie. She was unimpressed. There was something weird about the people she met who were into Scientology, Dixie believed; they had an odd intensity, almost like religious fervor, but their G.o.d was neither a minister nor a guru, but a middle-aged science fiction writer. Though Scientology purported to promote total freedom, it was not free-virtually nothing, other than the introductory lecture, came without a price tag. And yet Jeff didn't even seem to see that part of it. "I think it's a cult," she told him.

"You don't know what you're talking about," he said. "It's about living up to your full potential."

It was also, he and many other sixties converts believed, on a mission to save the world. Not only did Scientology promise to get rid of war, but it had a written program to do so: "All we had to do was clear people of their reactive minds and they would become rational and ethical and sane, and see that war and violence were wrong," Jeff said. "To me, it sounded plausible. I couldn't just sit by and do nothing while the world went to h.e.l.l."

If Dixie couldn't get behind that, then maybe the fault lay within her. One aspect of Scientology, which was not promoted until a person actually became a member, was the core belief that there were certain people in the world known as Suppressive Persons, or SPs. These were people who openly opposed Scientology-journalists, judges, politicians, tax collectors, psychiatrists-but they could also be hostile parents, or skeptical girlfriends. Maybe Dixie was one of them, several Scientologists suggested to Jeff; maybe she just didn't want him to get any better. Maybe she didn't want the world to get better. Maybe she was an SP.

Ultimately, Dixie gave Jeff an ultimatum: it was either her, she said in frustration, or Scientology. Jeff chose the latter. "It was just too important," he said.

By the early summer of 1968, many of the hippies in the Sierra Madre Canyon were into Scientology. Either that, or they were into hard drugs. It was a fractured, confusing, disheartening time: in April, Martin Luther King Jr. had been a.s.sa.s.sinated, followed two months later by Robert Kennedy. Riots had erupted in Watts, and then at the Chicago Democratic Convention. The anti-war protests, b.l.o.o.d.y and embattled, now seemed futile. Increasingly, many young searchers who'd drifted to the Canyon, particularly those just back from Vietnam, were using heroin. Shady characters followed them, hanging around on the fringes, dealing drugs. The scene in the Canyon became increasingly tense. After one young man was killed in a gunfight near his house, Jeff Hawkins decided it was time to move on.

But where should he go? The Vietnam War loomed. Jeff had already received a letter from his draft board, ordering him in for a pre-induction physical. He'd managed to get himself a psychiatric interview, and posing as "crazy"-something that only half-worked, he thought-was given a temporary deferment. But it was only temporary. He knew the army would eventually come for him.

To avoid this fate, one option was to become a Scientology minister and thus get a ministerial deferment. It was a bit of a ruse: being a Scientologist minister only meant that you could audit and perform Hubbard-approved birth and marriage ceremonies; actually doing ministerial duties was wholly voluntary. But the Scientology minister's course, which cost only around $15, was being sold to hundreds, if not thousands, of young men as a way to avoid the draft. Should he be ordained? Jeff considered it.

Then an even better option came along. Jeff was offered the chance to work for the Church of Scientology and leave the country entirely. The church published a number of magazines that Jeff thought were poorly designed. One day he approached a staff member at the Los Angeles Org and asked for a job. "I said something like 'Listen, I'm a graphic artist, do you need some help? Because I get your magazine and frankly it's a piece of s.h.i.+t.'"

The staffer, who seemed eager to have him join the team, took him into the back room and showed him a stack of amateurish-looking layouts. "These are all done at Saint Hill," he said. "We just fill in the information."

"I looked at them and thought, I could do better than this," Jeff said. But to do so, he'd have to move to England. "So I began to think about it." He'd decided to go ahead and get his minister's certificate-even if he left the country, it didn't mean he'd be able to escape the draft unless he became a minister. But no matter what, England would be a cool place to live for a while, he thought. To be at the center of Scientology, to join staff, which would elevate him above the level of a mere "public," or paying, church member; to use his artistic abilities to further the cause, and to be an ocean away from his draft board: who wouldn't want to go?

And so in June 1968, Jeff flew to England, excited to begin his new life at Scientology's worldwide headquarters at Saint Hill. Upon arriving, he was told that the church's promotions department had moved: the Publications Org, or Pubs, as it was called, was now located in Edinburgh, Scotland. Instead of settling into life at the manor, Jeff settled into a shabby, drafty, four-story building located "in an alley behind an alley." The place was filled with books, with a suite of editorial and design offices on the top floor. The hundred or so people on staff ranged in age from the early twenties to the midforties and had come to Edinburgh from America, England, Australia, and Scandinavia.

Scientology had taken off as a fad in the United States, and its popularity in the United Kingdom was nearly as high. At the close of 1967, the Church of Scientology in Great Britain reported it had made nearly $1 million that year -not as much as the Catholic Church, surely, but more than many new religious movements. At Saint Hill, where students now flocked from all over the world, the weekly income often averaged around $80,000. Working for Scientology, Jeff found out, was far different than simply doing Scientology. "We have a planet to clear," Jeff's supervisor told him on his first day on the job-a phrase he'd hear over and over again for many years to come. Staff members were paid 7 per week, which, amazingly, was enough for Jeff to rent a small flat with some friends, buy food and cigarettes, and still have a bit left over. He received most of his Scientology courses and auditing for free, but in return, he was expected to work every day and many nights, including weekends, with a day off only once every few weeks. "We don't keep a wog schedule here," the supervisor said.

Non-Scientologists were called wogs, a term thrown around liberally among church staff: "wog ideas," "wog justice," and "wog science." Hubbard began to use this offensive British slang term* in 1953 to denote any person who was not a Scientologist, in his estimation a "run-of-the-mill, garden-variety humanoid." For Jeff, who after the Kennedy a.s.sa.s.sinations and the conduct of the Vietnam War had, like many of his friends, bought into the idea of government conspiracies and other nefarious activities of "the establishment," wog was just another word for a member of mainstream society under the thumb of the Man.

The wog world, Jeff learned, was an "enturbulated" place. Enturbulated was a word that Hubbard made up and defined as "agitated and disturbed." There were many new words to learn in Scientology. Some were pure invention; and others were familiar but redefined by Hubbard. Ethics, for example, was a significant term in Scientology, perhaps the most significant. It was defined as "rationality toward the greatest good for the greatest number of dynamics." As one of the first lessons in Scientology, Jeff had learned that there were eight dynamics of existence, starting with your relations.h.i.+p with yourself, and then progressing to your relations.h.i.+p with your family, social group, society, plants, animals, the larger physical world, and ultimately, with the Supreme Being, however you chose to define that.

An ethical Scientologist, and an ethical person, in Hubbard's view, was someone who had successful relations.h.i.+ps on all dynamics. But the most important relations.h.i.+p was with the group, or the third dynamic, which was understood to be the Church of Scientology. Upstanding members who made gains in Scientology, furthering the group's overall goals, were considered "in-ethics": in line with organizational principles. Those who misbehaved in some way were "out-ethics": impediments, or even enemies, of the group, malfunctioning cogs in the Scientology machine.

Among Hubbard's outpouring of new technology in the mid- and late 1960s was something he called "ethics tech," which would become one of the most crucial elements of Scientology. Hubbard designed quasi-scientific formulas to measure a person's ethical level, which he called the "Conditions of Existence," with the constant goal being to "improve conditions" for oneself and the group.*

Years earlier, Hubbard had divided the world into two eras: the dull past (Before Dianetics) and AD (After Dianetics), the glorious, Technicolor world of Now. In that now-AD 18, or 1968-virtually anything that didn't directly relate to Scientology was considered suspect, if not overtly suppressive. It was crucial for the overall ethical condition of the group, Jeff understood, that nothing seep into its world that was "counter-intentioned," or based on a goal against the interests of Scientology. A related concept, "other intentionedness," refers to ideas or philosophies that have nothing to do with Scientology. To be either counter-intentioned or other-intentioned was considered "open-minded," which in Scientology, Jeff learned, was a bad thing.

And yet these issues didn't much affect Jeff's daily life. He had made tremendous gains in Scientology: in just a year or two of auditing and courses, he'd lost his adolescent shyness and become far more confident and outgoing. He could talk to anyone, including the most beautiful women, and he felt better about his work too. Everyone he knew in Edinburgh was a Scientologist, and everyone believed the same thing: no questions, no doubts.

Like him, most of Jeff's co-workers were longhaired kids in their twenties, many onetime student radicals who shared not only beliefs, but a lifestyle. No one cared who you slept with or what you did. After a long day it was typical for everyone to troop off to a movie or to a restaurant, where they would take over a group of tables and order multiple bottles of wine. One of the Scottish Scientologists on staff took it upon himself to take the group on long pub crawls along Edinburgh's Rose Street, with the mission of drinking a pint of beer at every bar they pa.s.sed (usually, Jeff said, they'd make it only halfway before, too drunk to continue, they staggered home). Overall, it was like college, he thought-except without the drugs, and with extremely long hours and intensely demanding work.

A few months after Jeff's arrival, an alert was sounded throughout the Publications Org: all staff members were required to report for an emergency briefing. Jeff put down his drafting pencils and ran downstairs to the conference room, where a woman in heavy makeup, wearing a naval dress uniform, sat behind a desk. She waited until the room was full. Then she introduced herself as Warrant Officer Doreen Casey, the new commanding officer of the Publications Org.

Casey was a special emissary of L. Ron Hubbard, the Founder, as he was now known, who smiled down at his followers from portraits and photographs throughout the orgs. Where Hubbard was living, exactly, was a bit of a mystery. He had resigned as the executive director of the Church of Scientology in the fall of 1966, announcing that he was going back to his first love: exploring. It was ridiculous, of course-everyone on the inside knew that the Old Man, as some staff members called him, retained control of Scientology; he continued to issue numerous policy letters and directives via Telex. But the trick, as he told his followers, was to stay below the radar so that no one could see him. He was "Fabian," as he called himself, a shape-s.h.i.+fter.

Rumors abounded within Scientology of Hubbard's whereabouts. He was in Africa, some said; others said he was sailing the high seas. In fact, both stories were true. Concerned for Scientology's security after the release of the Australian Board of Inquiry's "Anderson Report" in 1965-a doc.u.ment whose negative findings provided fodder for investigations into Scientology's activities in several other countries, including Great Britain-Hubbard had journeyed to the southern African nation of Rhodesia in April 1966, hoping to find a base for Scientology in a more remote location.* He purchased a house in the capital city, Salisbury, and began to eye a resort hotel on Lake Kariba where-unbeknownst to the sellers-he hoped to start a new Scientology organization. To ingratiate himself with the Rhodesian prime minister, Ian Smith, Hubbard personally delivered two bottles of champagne to Smith's home, though as one former a.s.sociate would recall, he was forced to leave the bottles with a butler when Smith wouldn't receive him.

The people of Rhodesia had no idea about Hubbard's plans. In several media interviews, he said he had come to Africa as a tourist, claiming to have distanced himself from Scientology. But Hubbard's strategy fell apart when the Rhodesian government, apparently suspicious of his motives, refused to renew his visa. Returning to England, Hubbard began to consider the future. For Scientology to flourish, he knew, it needed a secure home away from government oversight. There weren't many places in the world where that could be found. Then it came to him: 75 percent of the earth's surface was free from the control of any government. It was ocean.

That fall, Hubbard purchased a small fleet of s.h.i.+ps and set off for North Africa. The first s.h.i.+p, a fifty-foot Bermuda ketch called the Enchanter, sailed from England to the Canary Islands at the end of 1966, followed by a trawler, the Avon River, and later a larger, more impressive s.h.i.+p, the Royal Scotsman, the flags.h.i.+p of the fleet. For the better part of the next ten years, these s.h.i.+ps plied the waters of the Mediterranean and the eastern Atlantic, finding temporary ports in Las Palmas, Tangier, Valencia, Corfu, Lisbon, Tenerife, Madeira, and many points in between. Hubbard was now commodore of this small fleet; Mary Sue was a captain, and his teenage daughter, Diana, a redhead like her father, was lieutenant commander. And those serving Hubbard and his family-a private navy, complete with uniforms-were called the Sea Organization.

These were Hubbard's closest disciples: longtime Scientologists who'd been with Hubbard since the 1950s, a.s.sociates who had worked with him at Saint Hill, and increasingly, a cadre of younger and even more dedicated followers. Their work was highly confidential, and few other Scientologists knew anything about this shadowy team. Jeff's knowledge of the Sea Org was nil, except for the fact that Doreen was a member. And now she was running the show at Pubs.

"We are in the middle of a war, and this organization has been slack, slack, slack!" Casey screamed at the a.s.sembled Scientologists. "That's ending right now." Jeff almost laughed. Did she mean a literal war? Who was this woman? Then he looked around. The organization's leader, David Ziff, an heir to the Ziff-Davis publis.h.i.+ng dynasty, was nowhere to be found. Casey announced that Ziff had been removed from his post and sent away for ethics handling. Scientology was on a campaign to get Hubbard's books into as many bookstores around the world as they could. But they were failing, said Casey, because Pubs failed to deliver the books. Now the Sea Org would be in control, and she had come to get this organization "back on the rails." From now on, everyone would report to her-and address her as "sir," she informed them. The "hippie atmosphere" would no longer be tolerated. Long hair was to be cut short, beards were to be shaved, and workers were to call all of their superiors "sir," even if the sir in question was a female.

Under this new military-style discipline, which would soon be reflected throughout Scientology, if a design wasn't finished on time or a production order not met, staffers would be ordered to sleep among the books on the cold cement floor of the stockroom. Those who still did not produce and s.h.i.+p books fast enough would be "offloaded": sent to a smaller, more remote organization as punishment. "Either you are one hundred percent with me or you are against me," Casey said, in a threatening way. "And you will be dealt with accordingly."

We are at war. This, in fact, was a proclamation coming from L. Ron Hubbard himself, though Jeff had always taken it to be a metaphor. Hubbard first hinted at this conflict in a taped message, t.i.tled "Ron's Journal '67," that began to make its way through Scientology organizations in early 1968. Speaking to his followers for the first time since his disappearance, the Founder said nothing about his whereabouts other than that he was on an island, with a view of "the wide blue sea with s.h.i.+ps pa.s.sing by, a few fleecy clouds overhead, and the bright sun s.h.i.+ning down." Jeff, who had heard the tape months before Casey arrived, concluded that wherever Hubbard was, it sounded amazing. But far more astounding was what Hubbard had to say.

"I am giving you this short talk because you might have wondered what I was doing," Hubbard began. What he'd been doing, as it turned out, was discovering whole new levels of existence. He explained that he had been researching the most extraordinary realm of consciousness, a realm he had only just discovered, known as "Operating Thetan." An "OT," Hubbard said, was the most enlightened being in the universe, capable of operating "totally independent of his body, whether he had one or didn't have one." No one prior to the birth of Scientology had ever achieved this exalted state. Now, however, select Scientologists would be able to learn the techniques that made this possible, through a series of auditing processes known as the "OT levels."

Over the past year, Hubbard said, he'd been on a search for the deepest mysteries of the universe, a journey that took him through what he called the "Wall of Fire." The quest had been risky, and just that past winter, he said, he'd become very ill as a result of his efforts. And yet he managed to learn the truth and survived the experience, though barely. "The material involved ... is so vicious that it is carefully arranged to kill anyone if he discovers the exact truth of it," he warned. "I am very sure that I was the first one that ever did live through any attempt to attain that material."

Hubbard didn't elaborate too much on the tape about what his adventures had entailed, nor what he had discovered. But he hinted that an incident of catastrophic proportions had occurred seventy-five million years ago, an event so traumatic that its residuals were still being felt on Earth to this day. His new OTs, represented initially by the Sea Org, would lead the charge to rehabilitate the planet against a small but powerful band of opponents.

"Our enemies are less than twelve men," he said via "Ron's Journal '67." "They are members of the Bank of England, and other higher financial circles. They own and control newspaper chains, and they are all, oddly enough, directors in all the mental health groups in the world." Most of the world's leading heads of state, including Britain's prime minister, Harold Wilson, were, according to Hubbard, under the control of these individuals.

The church now had private investigators in its employ, digging into the backgrounds of various bankers, journalists, and politicians. Scientologists would learn more about these activities, though only in vague references, as Hubbard issued many more directives pertaining to the battle ahead. "We are rolling up the heavy guns quietly and getting things exactly timed," he said in a letter to his staff on November 4, 1968. Several weeks later, Hubbard announced that he had isolated the enemy and was readying a counterattack.

Then, on November 29, 1968, Hubbard made his most dramatic declaration to date in a memo to all staff, t.i.tled "The War." Hubbard revealed that the twelve individuals he had formerly referred to were merely a front for a much larger, more dangerous enemy: the World Federation of Mental Health. Hubbard often called it SMERSH, a reference to both the Stalin-era counterintelligence units of the Soviet army and the fictional nemesis of James Bond. This organization had been behind every attack on Dianetics and Scientology since 1950, Hubbard said. The Founder had begun to view psychiatrists as not simply suppressive but the ancient enemy of mankind, responsible for the enslavement of the human race. Psychiatry and the broader field of mental health, he explained, were chosen long ago as "a vehicle to undermine and destroy the West." But the Church of Scientology had stood in its way. Now, Hubbard said, Scientologists had "the goods" on SMERSH and intended to battle its forces worldwide, using every legal means at their disposal. "We don't stoop to murder and rough house. But man, the effectiveness of our means will become history," he wrote, though he never specified which tactics would be used. "It's a tough war. All wars are tough. It isn't over."

War. That was pretty much the opposite of what Jeff Hawkins, pacifist, ex-hippie, onetime anti-war protestor, stood for. One of the reasons he'd joined Scientology was because of its doctrine of world peace. But those thoughts would come much later-years later. At the time, Hubbard's directive, his "battle plan," as his missives were often called, seemed thrilling-a cause! Few staff members had time to wonder about all the evildoers. A wave of panic now washed over the organizations. The future of the world was at stake and they, the Scientologists, weren't doing enough. They had to do more. "In all the broad Universe," Hubbard said, "there is no other hope for Man than ourselves."

By the beginning of 1969, Scientologists around the world were dedicated to fighting Hubbard's war on psychiatry. In Britain, where L. Ron Hubbard had been declared an "undesirable alien" and his movement denounced in Parliament as a "pseudo-philosophical cult," Scientologists began to picket the London offices of national mental health organizations, carrying banners that said BUY YOUR MEAT FROM A PSYCHIATRIST and PSYCHIATRISTS MAIM AND KILL. In Edinburgh, Jeff and his Pubs colleagues conducted a late-night raid of what they were told was the local headquarters of the World Federation of Mental Health. "We rushed through the building, putting up lurid posters depicting psychiatrists as leering death's-head skulls, terrorizing innocent citizens," he said. "It seemed like a college prank."

But Hubbard's goals were deadly serious. As early as 1960, Hubbard had been considering how Scientology might take over society. "We are masters of IQ and ability," he wrote in a policy letter t.i.tled "The Special Zone Plan." "We have know-how. Any of us could select out a zone of life in which we are interested and then, entering it, bring order and victory to it." A housewife, for example, might take over her local garden club, and then, using Scientology's communications technology, could begin to present various Hubbardian ideas on marriage and child rearing. A junior executive might use the same techniques and "if only as 'an able person' he would rapidly expand a zone of control, to say nothing of his personal standing in the company." Hubbard also advised that the same techniques could be used in a more sophisticated sphere, such as government. "Don't bother to get elected," he instructed. "Get a job on the secretarial staff [of a politician] or [be] the bodyguard, use any talent one has to get a place close in." From that trusted post, he argued, Scientologists could wield tremendous power.

Hubbard also had instructed his troops how to do battle. "If attacked on some vulnerable point by anyone or anything or any organization, always find or manufacture enough threat against them to cause them to sue for peace," he instructed in one policy letter. "Don't ever defend, always attack. Don't ever do nothing. Unexpected attacks in the rear of the enemy's front ranks work best."

Now, in a memo to his wife written on December 2, 1969, Hubbard laid out the purpose of his war: "To take over absolutely the field of mental healing on this planet in all forms." That was not the original purpose of Scientology, he noted. "The original purpose was to clear Earth." But the various battles Scientology had engaged in over the years had led him to the inevitable conclusion that the enemy, psychiatry and its many front groups, would have to be eradicated.

Mary Sue Hubbard received in this missive her appointment as Chief Guardian and Controller of the Church of Scientology, reflecting her leaders.h.i.+p of a special organ of the church known as the Guardian's Office. Created by Hubbard in 1966, its job was to enforce church policy and "safeguard Scientology orgs, Scientologists, and Scientology," as Hubbard put it. Guardians held the highest posts on Scientology's board of directors. They ran its legal apparatus, its finance office, and its public relations and social outreach bureaus, which targeted such areas of concern as drug and criminal rehabilitation, education reform, and "eradicating mental health abuse"; the latter was handled by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, an advocacy group formed by the Guardian's Office in 1969. The Guardian's Office also ran a highly sophisticated intelligence operation that collected and maintained files on Scientology's growing list of enemies. Its guiding principle was attack. Under Mary Sue's leaders.h.i.+p (though always, it was understood, with the approval of her husband), the Guardian's Office filed dozens of libel suits against media outlets that had run negative stories about Scientology; gathered intelligence on members of various state, local, and national governments; and launched myriad propaganda campaigns and attacks on psychiatrists and psychiatric organizations.

Hubbard directed his war through written proclamation; his operatives carried it out. On March 26, 1969, for example, the leader issued an order, t.i.tled "Zones of Action," instructing his followers to "invade the territory of Smersh" and "purify the mental health field." Several months later, the Guardian's Office, acting on Hubbard's orders, initiated a strategy to take over England's National a.s.sociation of Mental Health. The plan was fairly simple: Scientologists, seeing that NAMH members.h.i.+p was open to the public, began joining the organization in large numbers-in October 1969, the NAMH, after receiving no more than 10 or 15 members.h.i.+p applications per month, suddenly saw the number jump to 227. By November, there were 302 new members. The organization's annual meeting, in which it elected new leaders, was scheduled for November 12, 1969; suddenly, there came a flurry of nominations from the new members, suggesting eight of their own for positions on the council.

As the British journalist C. H. Rolph pointed out in his 1973 book on the attempted takeover, Believe What You Like, the staff of the NAMH became suspicious when they noticed that all of the new members.h.i.+p applications had been mailed from either East Grinstead or a post office on Tottenham Court Road, the location of Scientology's London Org. Notifying the authorities, the group, just two days before the election, uncovered the scheme, which included a plan to elect the Scientologist David Gaiman, a member of the Guardian's Office, to the position of chairman. The Scientologists were subsequently asked to resign.*

Hubbard was careful to portray psychiatry not just as "barbaric," but also as barbarism endorsed by the state. It was the state that stuck with Jeff-Hubbard rarely attacked psychiatry without linking it in one way or another to Western governments or inst.i.tutions. This wasn't outrageous; it was simply revolutionary, Jeff thought. But the voice of Scientology became increasingly strident. Psychiatrists were rapists, killers. They were fascists-indeed, psychiatrists were behind Hitler's death camps. The nefarious SMERSH, and its agents throughout the Wog World (including, Hubbard believed, Time magazine, whose purpose, he once wrote, was to "cause riots and disaffection" ), needed to be destroyed. Only they, the Scientologists and L. Ron Hubbard, could do it.

It was within this increasingly combative mentality that Jeff found himself working for Warrant Officer Doreen Casey, who'd come to Pubs, it seemed to him, to reinforce the fact that Hubbard's war was literal. A new code of discipline, known as "lower conditions," was introduced and enforced. Based on Hubbard's Conditions of Existence, it prescribed punishment for any misstep or question that ran counter to the goal of clearing the planet and fighting the enemy, and it could be markedly humiliating.

A staff member who offended by, say, oversleeping was said to be in a condition of Liability, and made to wear blue overalls with a dirty gray rag tied around his arm. Someone who employed an unsuccessful sales strategy might be labeled an Enemy and would also have to wear overalls, with a heavy chain linked around her waist. Some of the worst offenders, a staffer who misspent church funds, for instance, were a.s.signed a condition of Treason. As Jeff recalled, "These people were ushered into the elevator and taken to a small s.p.a.ce at the bottom of the elevator shaft where they were imprisoned until they had come to their senses." To get out of any of these conditions required a member to evaluate his or her own thoughts, actions, and goals based on those of the greater group.

"Basically, one rises up from the conditions by aligning oneself with group goals," Jeff said. "The inevitable conclusion is that one's friends are the group, one's own intentions and actions have been selfish and petty, and one has to 'get with the program.'" Then, to show renewed dedication, a member would be required to do a series of amends-scrubbing floors with a toothbrush was a common penance-which culminated with the humiliating act of pet.i.tioning each member of the group, individually, to be allowed to rejoin them.

To Jeff, this wasn't Scientology, at least not the Scientology he had signed up for. It was hazing, something with which he, and many others, were unfamiliar. And yet he was invested in Scientology, dedicated to its cause. Hubbard, whose rich but gentle voice had the power to lull him into an almost hypnotic state, was his leader.

So, unable to process the new discipline, Jeff dismissed it as an aberration: a punishment inflicted solely by Doreen Casey. In fact Casey represented a definitive new trend within the church. Though its members and low-ranking staffers like Jeff were ex-hippies and other free spirits, the Sea Organization operated on far more authoritarian principles. A failed war hero, Hubbard now commanded his own navy. And its staff, in turn, would soon command Scientology.

Chapter 5.

Travels with the Commodore.

THE SMALL PROPELLER plane sailed over the Straits of Gibraltar like a shuddering tin can. On board, Jeff Hawkins closed his eyes. He practiced a technique Scientologists often used to make things happen: he created an image in his mind, a "postulate," of the plane landing safely on the ground. A few minutes later, it made a b.u.mpy landing in Tangier. Then the plane took off once again, and an hour later finally set down in Casablanca. Jeff breathed a happy sigh. He had no idea where he was going, but at least he was now on solid ground.

It was 1971 and Jeff, who had risen in the ranks of the Publications Org, had been summoned to attend a special training course for would-be Scientology executives aboard Hubbard's flags.h.i.+p, the Royal Scotsman-now renamed the Apollo. Exactly where the s.h.i.+p was sailing, Jeff didn't know. In Copenhagen, where Pubs had relocated to handle the dissemination of Scientology materials across Europe, Jeff had been given a plane ticket and told to fly to Madrid. There he was met by a Sea Org official working for a cover organization, the Operation and Transport Company, who put him on a plane bound for Casablanca. "When you land, get on a bus for a town called Safi," the official said.

Jeff waited for a bus on the crowded streets of Casablanca and finally found one headed for Safi, a seaport several hours away. After an uncomfortable journey, he arrived and made his way toward the docks. There he saw it: a gleaming white s.h.i.+p.

"Welcome aboard!" David Ziff, Jeff's old boss at Pubs, shouted from the gangplank. Jeff hadn't seen Ziff in three years. Back then he'd looked like a rumpled college professor. Now he was a spit-polished, stand-at-attention officer of the Sea Org, dressed in crisp military whites. "Welcome to Flag!" he said, referring to the s.h.i.+p, a three-story, 3,278-ton behemoth that, in a former life, had served as an Irish cattle ferry and then as a troop transport during World War II. Now it housed offices, dining facilities, cabins, and a Telex room. At the top were two large white stacks, each engraved with the letters LRH in elaborate gold script.

Jeff Hawkins may have hated Sea Org Warrant Officer Doreen Casey, but he had overwhelming respect for the Sea Organization as a whole. They were the "aristocracy of Scientology," as Hubbard described them, who'd signed contracts for one billion years of service, pledging their lives-current and future-to the Cause. Their motto, "We Come Back," signified eternal vigilance.

Originally called the Sea Project, the group was staffed with volunteers; most were recruited at Saint Hill. One of them, Neville Chamberlin, was a young British Scientologist who'd grown up around Hubbard-his mother had been one of earliest clients at Scientology's London Org, where Hubbard spent a great deal of time. Chamberlin had begun working at Saint Hill shortly after finis.h.i.+ng high school, in the mid-1960s. One day in November 1966, a notice appeared on the Saint Hill bulletin board, asking for volunteers with naval or seagoing experience. Within the hour, the notice was taken down, and those who had seen it, including Chamberlin, were sworn to secrecy. "We began to notice certain staff members disappearing from their posts," recalled Chamberlin. "It was all very hush-hush." Finally, in April 1967, Chamberlin was recruited to join this "confidential project." He was told he'd need a valid pa.s.sport and should pack a suitcase. Soon after, he and nineteen other Scientologists left Saint Hill for the northern seaport of Hull, where they set sail aboard a 414-foot trawler, the Avon River, for Las Palmas in the Canary Islands. Two other s.h.i.+ps, the Royal Scotsman and the Enchanter, would follow.

Despite the call for volunteers with experience at sea, few in the Sea Project knew much about s.h.i.+ps, which may explain why Hubbard hired professional seamen to sail the boat from England to the Canary Islands. The Avon River had a particularly arduous journey-its skipper, Captain John Jones, would later recall the trip as the strangest excursion of his life. The sole navigational guide allowed on board was a sailing manual written by Hubbard, called the "Org Book," which banned the use of advanced navigational technology like radar and insisted the s.h.i.+ps plot their course using radio frequencies. "My crew were sixteen men and four women Scientologists who wouldn't know a trawler from a tramcar. But they intended to sail this tub four thousand miles in accordance with the 'Org Book,'" Jones later told a reporter from the London Sunday Mirror. "We tried these methods. Getting out of Hull we b.u.mped the dock. Then, using the 'Org Book' navigation system based on radio beams from the BBC and other stations, we [sailed only a few miles down the coast] before the navigator admitted he was lost. I stuck to my watch and s.e.xtant, so at least I knew where we were."

Chamberlin and the rest of the Avon River's crew arrived in Las Palmas several weeks later. To conceal the fact that they were Scientologists, Hubbard had incorporated the Hubbard Explorational Company Ltd. before he left England, and now ordered his Sea Project to explain to anyone who asked that they were members of a team of archaeologists. With this as their cover, Chamberlin and the crew of the Avon River set to work giving the s.h.i.+p a major overhaul, converting cargo holds into bunks and offices, blasting away rust, and slapping on several coats of fresh white paint.

Hubbard occasionally stopped by, "dressed in his denim jeans and jacket and peaked cap," as Chamberlin recalled, but he spent most of his time in the hills, where he'd rented a hacienda overlooking the sea, known as the Villa Estrella. It was from the patio of the villa that Hubbard recorded "Ron's Journal '67" in September 1967, announcing his breakthrough discovery of the Wall of Fire, something so physically taxing, he told his followers, he'd broken his back, his knee, and his arm over the course of his research. Chamberlin didn't notice that Hubbard had any broken bones, but he did recall that he had a "pharmaceutical store of drugs" at the Villa Estrella. "Most of the stuff was codeine-type pills," he said. "But this wasn't just for migraine, it was a whole wall of stuff."

Chamberlin was one of a number of followers who believed Hubbard did most of his early OT research under the influence of drugs, as well as, perhaps, Jameson Irish whiskey, which Chamberlin recalled he'd drunk liberally at Saint Hill. In one oft-quoted 1967 letter to his wife, Hubbard admitted it: "I'm drinking lots of rum and popping pinks and greys."

In Las Palmas, Hubbard eventually sobered up. "I don't think that Hubbard did any drugs after 1967," said Chamberlin. Indeed, those who joined Hubbard in the late 1960s say they never saw Hubbard intoxicated at all. "When I was with LRH, only twice in eight years on the s.h.i.+p did I see him take a drink of alcohol, and it was whiskey to warm up after a storm," said one of Hubbard's former aides, Karen Gregory.* "I never saw LRH take drugs. And I had access to all of his drawers, his closets. I never saw anything."

By the end of 1967, Hubbard had recruited many more people to join the Sea Organization, as it was now called. They were a motley crew: of the fifty or so volunteers who'd sailed to Las Palmas on either the Enchanter or the Avon River, and the additional twenty Scientologists who left England several months later on the Royal Scotsman, almost no one could sail a s.h.i.+p. But that didn't seem to faze Hubbard. He convinced his devotees that they had sailed before-if not in this life, then in a previous one.

One young Scientologist, Hana Eltringham, a South African nurse who'd joined the Sea Organization as a "great adventure," later recalled her terror at being put in command of the Avon River in 1968. To remedy this fear, Hubbard put the twenty-two-year-old Eltringham on the E-meter and ordered her to recall the last time she'd been captain of a s.h.i.+p. "My first thought was, this is ridiculous," she said. "Then I started to get vague impressions of a time in some past life when I was a captain of a s.h.i.+p and there was a storm at sea ... It was very real, not an imaginary thing at all." By the end of her session, she said, she felt calmer. "I went up on deck and felt the fear and terror in my stomach just disappear. I suddenly felt very able, very competent to tackle anything that came along."

While learning the ropes, Hubbard's Sea Organization (like members of the Pubs Org, as Jeff Hawkins recalled) became test subjects for Hubbard's ethics conditions. The whole series of awards and punishments was inst.i.tuted, including the wearing of heavy chains or rags to signify a degraded state. Crew members who were punished for a particularly low ethics condition found themselves condemned to a few days, or even weeks, in a dark chain locker in the bowels of the s.h.i.+p.

By the latter part of 1968, the Sea Organization had arrived in Corfu, where Hubbard decided to give his s.h.i.+ps heroic new names -the pedestrian-sounding Avon River, Enchanter, and Royal Scotman were rechristened the Athena, the Diana, and the Apollo, in honor of their Greek hosts. Of the three, the latter s.h.i.+p became Hubbard's flags.h.i.+p, also simply called "Flag." This s.h.i.+p became the setting for a particularly draconian punishment called overboarding, whereby errant Scientologists-be they Sea Org members or visitors who'd come to take a course aboard the Apollo and had somehow disappointed the Commodore (as Hubbard now was called)-were thrown into the Mediterranean. Hubbard or one of his immediate subordinates would initiate the ritual with a chant from the captain's deck: "We commit your sins and errors to the deep and trust you will rise a better thetan."

"There were degrees of being thrown overboard," says Chamberlin. "There was straight overboard, overboard with a blindfold, or with hands tied; overboard with a blindfold and with hands tied, and then blindfolded with both hands and feet tied." He was once thrown overboard, blindfolded, he says, for ordering secondhand tires without approval.

By the time Jeff Hawkins arrived on the Apollo in 1971, overboarding was no longer used*-or at least Jeff never saw it. The Sea Organization was now Scientology's senior management organization, and Hubbard's flags.h.i.+p, the only vessel of the original fleet to still be sailing Mediterranean waters, was its headquarters.

Hubbard tended to remain out of view. He spent most of his time locked away in the Research Room, his private cabin above the main deck. No one was quite sure what he did in there, though it was a.s.sumed that he spent at least part of his time exploring new realms, such as the OT levels, by auditing himself. Once, Jeff almost ran headlong into the Commodore, who was standing at the foot of the stairs, talking with his aides. "H-h-h.e.l.lo, sir!" he stammered. The other Sea Org officers looked at Jeff as if he were a fish that had flopped onto the deck. But Hubbard smiled at him. "Well, h.e.l.lo there!" he boomed, and laughed.

That was the last time Jeff saw Hubbard on the Apollo. His days were taken up with the Executive Briefing Course, as the training was called. Much of it involved listening to taped lectures delivered by Hubbard, as well as studying, and in some cases memorizing, all of Hubbard's so-called policy letters, a voluminous collection of memos that outlined his concept of "management technology," a set of business principles Hubbard had come up with to streamline the administration of his organizations. His concept, Jeff learned, was the ne plus ultra of organizational theory, much better than anything one might learn at Harvard Business School. Every facet of Scientology-from sales figures and financial data, to members.h.i.+p, to the number of students being processed in auditing, to the employees themselves-was evaluated statistically. There was one guiding principle of this a.n.a.lysis: an organization or an individual should remain "upstat," or successful, at all times.

While the Apollo sailed up and down the Moroccan coast, Jeff sat in a hold of the s.h.i.+p that had been outfitted as a cla.s.sroom, absorbing Hubbard's theories about promotion. As with all other topics, the Old Man had very specific ideas. "Don't explain. Penetrate," he wrote. Don't waste time describing Scientology to the public. Let the promotional literature do that for you. Even when asked point-blank what Scientology is, never tell anyone. Just encourage them to find out for themselves.

But, Hubbard insisted, do it aggressively. He advocated the hard sell, a technique he'd picked up from studying the methods of car salesmen. An important tactic was to avoid giving potential customers an option: telling rather than asking them to buy. This method worked, said Hubbard, the old hypnotist, because most people lived "more or less in a hypnotic daze," due to their aberrant state, and thus tended to respond to direct commands. Early Scientology ads embodied this idea, featuring slogans cast in the imperative: "Buy This Book!" or "Get Auditing!"

Jeff wondered about this technique-wouldn't it be better to explain to people what Scientology was all about, rather than simply telling them to do something? But Hubbard was adamant. "We have learned the hard way that an individual from the public must never be asked to DECIDE or CHOOSE," he stated in one policy. Just tell them that Scientology could handle their problems, and then tell them to read a book or take a course. Then the Founder himself could explain Scientology to them.

Jeff spent close to six months on the Apollo in 1971, one of forty Scientologists selected for the Executive Briefing Course. At twenty-six, he was regarded as an up-and-comer in the movement, as he had recently taken over the largest division in the Publications Organization, the Production Division, where all of the books, recorded lectures, E-meters, and films were produced. He was successful, and aboard the Apollo he was treated like a VIP. He was impressed with the s.h.i.+p and with the highly enthusiastic men and women who ran it with military precision. Midway through his course, Jeff was invited to join them. "So what are your plans for the next billion years?" a Sea Org recruiter asked him.

Jeff looked at the woman. He had recently been doing a new, super-secret series of auditing procedures called the "L-Rundowns," which were meant to correct transgressions from billions of years past. Something about the process was exhilarating. Once you got the idea that you had lived countless lifetimes, had been all kinds of creatures-from s.p.a.ce pirates to emperors to soldiers-your current life seemed fairly provincial, a mere blip on the screen. "Well, I guess I don't have any plans," he said.

The recruiter held out a contract. "How would you like to join the Sea Org and clear the planet?"

Jeff signed. And so did every other student on board who, one by one, had been pulled aside and asked the same question. In 1967, when Jeff joined the movement, there were twenty-one official churches of Scientology around the world. Four years later, that number had more than doubled, and smaller Scientology outposts, known as "missions," were springing up as well. Now Jeff and his colleagues were challenged to grow Scientology even further: to "boom" the movement planetwide.

Jeff was an artist, not a businessman. But he asked himself, Why can't I be an executive? The original Sea Org members, he was reminded, had been kids in their twenties, like him, with absolutely no technical experience. And yet they had learned to sail s.h.i.+ps. It had been their duty to navigate the sea; now it was up to Jeff Hawkins and his colleagues to steer Scientology on land and make sure it kept growing, no matter what obstacles they faced. As Hubbard said, "The supreme test of a thetan is his ability to make things go right."

This cannot-fail posture instilled an intensely compet.i.tive att.i.tude within Scientology. Ultimately, it helped feed the impression that Scientologists were highly materialistic. In one 1972 policy letter to his finance officers, Hubbard summed up his philosophy: "MAKE MONEY. MAKE MORE MONEY. MAKE OTHERS PRODUCE AS TO MAKE MONEY."

Despite this edict, Hubbard himself was not particularly concerned with money for himself. "He did not have extravagant needs or habits. His lifestyle was really quite modest," recalled his former steward, Ken Urqhart, who worked for Hubbard until 1974. "Neither he nor Mary Sue had huge wardrobes. Neither had noticeably expensive clothes"-although Hubbard did become attached, in the early 1970s, to "exotic naval uniforms," Urqhart added. Aside from his impressive camera collection and his beloved Jaguar sports car, said Urqhart, he didn't make a show of material possessions-quite in contrast to other gurus of the day, such as Indian mystic Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, who owned ninety-three Rolls-Royces.

But profits were clearly important to Hubbard. He was, at the end of the day, a businessman, and he viewed success based on his product and how well it sold.* To motivate his workers, Hubbard inst.i.tuted corporate incentive policies. The sales statistics of all the organizations were handed in each Thursday at 2 P.M. and sent up the chain of command, along with a portion of weekly proceeds. Successful orgs that raised their income statistic were rewarded with more money, and their staff were given perks such as days off or dinners out. Those orgs whose statistics fell, on the other hand, received less funding; their staff members were punished with a harsh review and "lower conditions" enforced by the ethics division. Individual Scientologists and organizations that brought in new clients or encouraged existing members to sign up for more advanced courses and auditing might also receive direct cash payments.

Most of the money made by Scientology organizations was plowed back into the organizations themselves. But some was siphoned off to pay the Founder, who by the 1970s held Swiss bank accounts as well as secret accounts in Luxembourg and Lichtenstein. Money was transferred into these accounts from a Liberian sh.e.l.l corporation, the Religious Research Foundation, which had been set up specifically to build the Founder's coffers. In an interview with the New York Times, a former Sea Org executive named Laurel Sullivan claimed that she and other Scientologists "created fraudulent and retroactive billings" to make it appear that Hubbard had earned this money legally. "It was fraud," Sullivan said, "an out-and-out ripping off of funds that were supposed to go to the church."

The pressure to keep raising more money was intense. Particularly in America, church staff struggled to stay productive, devising ingenious measures to do so. Throughout the orgs, a take-no-prisoners approach resulted in a huge boom in both members.h.i.+p and income. This had been accomplished by keeping staff up all night, and in some cases, locking members into rooms until they wrote a check for their next service. Those who couldn't afford it at the time were encouraged to "postulate," or imagine, that they'd have the money in the near future, and then write what were called "postulate checks." According to this idea, the member would have the money to cover the check by the time it was deposited. In practice this didn't work-checks bounced all the time. But such voodoo accounting did at least temporarily raise the orgs' sales statistics.

To make sure the various organizations ran smoothly, Hubbard insisted that every member of the staff memorize a complex "org board," or management chart, listing every single post within a Scientology organization, from the executive division to the maintenance crew. In the 1970s, Scientologists recited the organizational chart at meetings. "All the staff would stand in front of that organizational board, and as a group they would chant every part of it," said Nancy Many, who worked at the Boston Org and held various senior executive posts at the international management level of Scientology. "There was a time when I could just rattle off that entire organizational board by heart."

Hubbard dubbed this method "Chinese School." In his writings, he described it as a joyous singsong affair that could be applied to anything one needed to learn-a foreign language, a mathematical or scientific theorem, or Hubbard's elaborate, eighty-point tone scale. It was also a form of social conditioning. "Chinese School was an effective means of robotically learning almost anything," said Many. "You knew who was responsible for what, and what everyone was supposed to do, and it was ingrained-you didn't even think about it. From a standard of efficiency, it was felt that the more each individual member of the organization understood about the functions in other departments and divisions, the stronger the group would be. That was the good part of Chinese School," she said. "The bad part, of course, is you got your mind to meld with LRH."

The Sea Org, of which Jeff Hawkins was now a member, enforced Scientology's codes, but only Scientology staff members were subjected to them. The paying public had no sense of the repressive environment at the orgs. They were being sold total freedom, even if the path to get there kept changing. Each year, new rundowns, or auditing procedures, were created to enhance members' understanding of themselves and their eternal nature. Tremendous emphasis was put on past lives-indeed, "Get 'em past life!" was one of L. Ron Hubbard's frequent proclamations, according to some former aides. If a Scientologist didn't have a past life experience, the argument went, something was wrong with his or her auditing.

In a similar vein, the original goal of Scientology and Dianetics-becoming Clear-was now only the beginning. Signs had been appearing at Scientology organizations around the world, declaring a new initiative: "Go OT." Operating Thetan was Scientology's new product line-there were eight OT levels, each one promising a higher level of personal power and spiritual enlightenment-and over time it came to define Scientology overall. Hubbard's OT discoveries were the most carefully guarded secret in Scientology, and this was particularly true with regard to its most exclusive product: OT 3.

Jeff Hawkins was primed for years for OT 3 by other Sea Org friends who'd done the level and hinted at something so fantastic, "it would blow my mind beyond anything I'd ever imagined." He waited more than five years to learn the secret. OT 3 wasn't something one simply purchased and then followed unreservedly, like other auditing processes. Scientologists had to be invited to pa.s.s through the Wall of Fire. Beforehand, they were put through a security check to verify that they were ready to receive this knowledge. They then signed a waiver promising never to reveal the secrets of OT 3, nor to hold the Church of Scientology responsible for any trauma or damage they might endure during this stage of auditing. Finally, they were given a manila folder, which they placed in a locked briefcase; they were instructed to read it in a private, guarded room. Inside was a single-page doc.u.ment, written in Hubbard's longhand script, which laid out what seemed, to some, to be Hubbard's book of Genesis.

It began like this: "The head of the Galactic Confederation (76 planets around larger stars visible from here-founded 95,000,000 yrs ago, very s.p.a.ce opera) solved overpopulation (250 billion or so per planet-178 billion average) by ma.s.s implanting." This leader, a tyrant named Xenu, set out to capture the trillions who opposed him and deposited them in volcanoes on the prison planet of Teegeeack, otherwise known as Earth. He then eradicated them and all life on the planet with hydrogen bombs, leaving only the thetans, or souls, of the captives-which were then brainwashed, or "implanted," to rid them of their original ident.i.ties. Millions of years later, when life began again on Teegeeack, the traumatized thetans attached themselves to human bodies.

This was the crux of OT 3: that one's problems were not caused merely by the reactive mind, but by aberrant "body thetans," each one reliving the trauma of Xenu's ancient genocide. That trauma had set the course of human history, resulting in the social and political ills-war, famine, genocide, poverty, drugs, nuclear weapons, acts of terror-that had played out on the planet for generations. To truly clear oneself, a Scientologist had to audit each one of these body thetans through specific processes Hubbard had designed: uncl.u.s.tering them, clearing their engrams, and ultimately freeing them of their implants. This, Hubbard believed, would be each individual's salvation, and ultimately, it would be the salvation of mankind.

Jeff Hawkins believed every word of this new gospel. Nancy Many, the Scientology executive from Boston, took it with a grain of salt. But then, she'd also taken the idea that Christ walked on water with a grain of salt, she said. "I was raised as a Catholic to believe that Jesus turned water into wine and raised the dead. I mean, is that plausible? So, to me, the Xenu story was like a Bible story." More than a few Scientologists read the Xenu story as "a bizarre science fiction story," as one former member described it. But fearing they'd be denounced for doubting Hubbard's teachings-to do so would be a thought crime-they held their tongue.