Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief

by Lawrence Wright

“What a lot of people don’t realize is that Scientology is black magic just spread out over a long time period,” he contended. “Black magic is the inner core of Scientology—and it is probably the only part of Scientology that really works.”

He also once tried to hypnotize Sara’s mother, after she had a stroke, to persuade her to leave her money to him. But then he would accuse Sara of hypnotizing him in his sleep.

The organization is clearly schizophrenic and paranoid, and this bizarre combination seems to be a reflection of its founder LRH.

Dianetics, Hayakawa noted, was neither science nor fiction, but something else: “fictional science.”

Hubbard’s view of women as revealed in this and many other examples is not just contemptuous; it betrays a kind of horror.

The child on whom the abortion is attempted is

condemned to live with murderers whom he reactively knows to be murderers through all his weak and helpless youth!”

He recalled seeing his father standing over his mother with a coat hanger in his hand. The other attempted abortion was upon himself.

When scientists tested some of Hubbard’s claims and found that his techniques produced no measurable improvement, he blamed them for failing to understand his system.

but divorce would hurt his reputation. The solution: if Sara really loved him, she should kill herself.

“He told me that I was under the influence of this communist cell” run by her husband, Sara recalled. “And that they were dictating to me what to do, and that I was in a state of complete madness. I told him, ‘Yep, I think you’re right. The only thing I can do is to work through it and do whatever they say.’ ”

Ron replied that the Communists had hypnotized her. Sara played along, but insisted she would have to go through the divorce; only then would she be able to break free of their power.

“To keep a person on the Scientology path,” Hubbard once told one of his associates, “feed him a mystery sandwich.” It may be true that his decision to take his movement in a new

Religion is always an irrational enterprise, no matter how ennobling it may be to the human spirit.

The failure of Hubbard’s followers to challenge him made them complicit in the creation of the mythical figure that he became. They conspired to protect the image of L. Ron Hubbard, the prophet, the revelator, and the friend of mankind.

Hubbard had a fantasy that he would be welcomed in Rhodesia, that the black population would embrace him like a brother, and that eventually he would become its leader, issuing passports and his own currency.

However, the current prime minister, Ian Smith, was desperately trying to negotiate a settlement with the black nationalist movement that would preserve white-minority rule. Hubbard thoughtfully wrote up a constitution for the government that he claimed would accomplish just that, but he couldn’t get anyone to take it seriously.

“The real reason that Hubbard was kicked out of Rhodesia was that his cheques bounced.”

“Our enemies on this planet are less than twelve men,” Hubbard discloses. “They own and control newspaper chains and they are oddly enough directors in all the mental health groups in the world.” Their plan was to “use mental health, which is to say psychiatric electric shock and prefrontal lobotomy, to remove from their path any political dissenters.”

Hubbard had written in Dianetics that the eyesight of a Clear gradually improves to optimum perception. And yet, he admitted elsewhere that his vision was so bad in the postwar years that he could scarcely see his typewriter to write.

He came to believe that in some of his past lives on this planet, he had buried treasure in various locations, so he launched an expedition to unearth his ancient hoards. He called it the Mission into Time.

He instructed them to parrot his exact words and tone of voice when they were delivering one of his directives—to inform the captain what time to set sail, for instance, or to tell a member of the crew he was “a fucking asshole” if he had displeased him.

They had to call the Messenger “sir” even if she was a twelve-year-old girl.

The relationship between Hubbard and these girls was intimate but not overtly sexual. They prepared his bath when he retired and would sit outside his room until he awakened and called out, “Messenger!” They would help him out of bed, light his cigarette, run his shower, prepare his toiletries, and help him dress.

He stayed sitting on the chain for two days and nights. The crew could hear the boy crying. His mother pleaded with Hubbard to let him out, but Hubbard reminded her of the Scientology axiom that children are actually adults in small bodies, and equally responsible for their behavior. Other

One little girl, a deaf-mute, was placed in the locker for a week because Hubbard thought it might cure her deafness.

The true scheme was to establish a presence in the country long enough to incorporate as the WFMH; and then, posing as the actual mental health organization, go to the United Nations with a plan for enforced euthanization of the “useless or unfixable” elements of society.

Weirdly, the letter was signed, “Your good friend, J. Edgar Hoover.”

Nothing in American history can compare with the scale of the domestic espionage of Operation Snow White.

For instance, the Chinese Communists dismissed the quest for individual expression and the exploration of alternative ideas as examples of “bourgeois mentality.” In Scientology, terms such as “Suppressive Person” and “Potential Trouble Source” play a similar role of declaring allegiance to the group and pushing discussion off the table.

Harrington wound up being sent to the RPF, and when she balked at that, she was demoted even further—to the RPF’s RPF, alone, in the furnace room under the parking garage of the Clearwater base. The script never did get made into a film.

accused the Messenger outside his door of abandoning his post. “Someone came in and exchanged my left boot for a boot half a size smaller,” he said. “They even scuffed it up to make it look the same. Someone is trying to make me think I’m crazy.” IN AN EFFORT to lighten the mood, several of the crew made

‘When these episodes occur, do not touch him!’ The mother reiterated, ‘Yes, please don’t touch him!’ I said, ‘What happens?’ They said, ‘David gets very, very violent, and he beats the hell out of you if you touch him.’ And the sister says, ‘Oh my God, he does beat you, really hard!’ ” Again and again, the family members emphasized that David had beaten them during an attack.

He grew a beard and called himself “Jack Farnsworth.”

“At OT III, you find out you’re really thousands of individual beings struggling for control of your body. Aliens left over from space wars that are giving you cancer or making you crazy or making you impotent,” he later recalled. “I went psychotic on OT III. I lost a sense of who I was.”

The Scientologists directed their intentions toward the judge and the jury, hoping to influence their decisions telepathically.

Old age and illness were embarrassing refutations of Scientology’s core beliefs.

Although many in the medical profession have been hostile to the Purification Rundown, citing it as a fraud and a scam, Hubbard thought he deserved a Nobel Prize for it.

Koppel won an Emmy for that show. Miscavige took credit for it, saying, “I got Ted the Emmy.” He even had a replica of an Emmy made and placed in the Officers Lounge at Gold Base. But he never went on television again.

Financial disparities within a church are not unusual.

including the Swiss Guards who protect the pope, and an entire order of nuns dedicated to being housekeepers for the papal apartments.

Flinn saw the RPF as being entirely voluntary and even tame compared to what he experienced as a friar in the Franciscan Order.

The Scientology creed that humans are “thetans” simply means we are beings with immortal souls, which no Christian would argue

However, when he finally decided to leave his order, instead of being incarcerated or given a freeloader tab, he was given a dispensation releasing him from his vows. He never felt the need to escape. He took off his robe, put on civilian clothes, and walked away. His spiritual adviser gave him five hundred dollars to help him out. He was never punished or fined, or made to disconnect from anyone.

spokesperson for the Church of Scientology in New Zealand explained that the source of Aum Shinrikyo’s crimes was the practice of psychiatry in Japan.

Marshall Applewhite, their leader, a former choirmaster, represented himself as a reincarnated Jesus who was receiving guidance from the television show Star Trek.

“This is not a church or a religious organization,” the labor minister, Norbert Blum, told Maclean’s magazine. “Scientology is a machine for manipulating human beings.”

Travolta offered to help, saying that he had just reached a new level in Scientology, which gave him enhanced abilities. Brando said, “Well, John, if you have powers, then absolutely.”

The possibility that the leader of the church might be irrational or even insane was so taboo that no one could even think it, much less voice it aloud.

One day, while on a Delta flight from LA to Clearwater, Miscavige walked to the cabin from his seat in first class and showed some photos from a muscle magazine to Parman and his steward, who traveled with him. He told them he wanted to “get ripped and have six-pack abs.”