Let's Sell These People a Piece of Blue Sky: Hubbard, Dianetics and Scientology (8 page)

I made an E-metered statement to the Advanced Org’s
“Director of Processing,” a wizened seventy-year old Sea Org veteran and was
taken into session by an OT Review Auditor. He asked whether I had “over-run”
(gone past) the end of the process. The needle obviously floated, as the
Auditor told me I had indeed “over-run” OT 2. I was never able to pinpoint any
tangible benefit from doing OT 2, but for the rest of that day I was as pleased
as Punch.

At last I was ready for OT 3. After “Clear,” OT 3 is the
most significant level to Scientologists. In a 1967 tape announcing the release
of OT 3 Hubbard had this to say:

“I have probably done something on the order of a
century of research in the very few years since 1963, and can advise you now that
I have completed any and all of the technology required from wog
[non-Scientologist] to OT...

The mystery of this universe and this particular area
of the universe has been, as far as its track [history] is concerned,
completely occluded ... it is so occluded that if anyone tried to penetrate it,
as I am sure many have, they died. The material involved in this sector is so
vicious that it is carefully arranged to kill anyone if he discovers the exact
truth of it. So, in January and February of this year I became very ill, almost
lost this body and somehow or other brought it off, and obtained the material
and was able to live through it. I am very sure that I was the first one that
ever did live through any attempt to attain that material.”
³

The purported “End Phenomenon” of OT 3 is “Return of full
self determinism: freedom from overwhelm.”
⁴
Before being allowed
onto the OT 3 Course I had to sign a waiver, to the effect that any damage
incurred during the auditing was my own responsibility. The mystique was being
poured on with a ladle and I loved every moment of it.

In the Advanced Org course room, I signed out the OT 3
folders. Behind a thin partition at the back of the course room I opened the
dog-eared, pink cardboard folder. A few pages in I came to a photocopy of the
handwritten instructions for OT 3.

The story was fragmented, little more than a series of
notes. Hubbard asserted that some 70 million years ago, our planet, then called
Teegeeack, had been one of the 76 planets of the Galactic Confederation. The
Confederation was badly overpopulated, with hundreds of billions on each
planet. Xenu (also called “Xemu” by Hubbard), the president of the
Confederation, ruled that the excess population should be sent to Teegeeack,
put alongside volcanoes and subjected to nuclear explosions. The spirits, or
thetans, of the victims were then “implanted” with religious and technological
images for 36 days. They were then sent to either Hawaii or Las Palmas to be
stuck together into clusters. Human beings, so Hubbard said, are actually a
collection of thetans, a cluster of “Body Thetans”. Xenu was rounded up six
years after the event and imprisoned in a mountain. According to Hubbard, anyone
remembering this material would die.
⁵

I was reminded of Colin Wilson’s novel
The Mind Parasites
,
where invisible creatures from outer space attach themselves to human beings,
and feed off their emotions. Not that I disbelieved any of it. In seven years,
I had come to trust Hubbard implicitly.

The proof would come in the auditing, but I felt a
tremendous sense of relief. Here at last was the remedy for my problems! My
body was inhabited by a mass of “Body Thetans” which had formed into “Clusters”
and were influencing my thoughts, my feelings, my behavior. This at last
explained why, although I was Clear, I still felt depressed occasionally, lost
my temper sometimes, and did not have a perfect memory. It explained my
back-ache and my short-sightedness. Body Thetans!

OT3 also addressed an earlier incident, some four
quadrillion
years ago. This was an implant which was supposedly the gateway to our
universe. The unsuspecting thetan was subjected to a short, high-volume crack,
followed by a flood of luminescence, and then saw a chariot followed by a
trumpeting cherub. After a loud set of cracks, the thetan was overwhelmed by
darkness.
⁵

Back at my lodgings I carefully locked my auditing room
door, unlocked my bag, and placed the OT 3 folders on the table. I did not
think about the ramifications of what I was doing. I simply wanted to find a
Body Thetan. This was done by thinking about parts of the body, and seeing if
there was a reaction on the E-meter. Then with “a very narrow attention span”
(so as not to upset any other Body Thetans in the vicinity) the Body Thetan
would be audited through Incident 2 and then Incident 1 at which point it
should unstick and go on its way. If a “Cluster” of Body Thetans (or “BTs”) was
discovered the incident which made it a Cluster had to be audited, and then the
individual BTs that formed it run through the Incidents.

A list of volcanoes was checked to see where the BT had
received Incident 2. Although I did not stop to think if this was self-induced
schizophrenia, or to consider the parallels to demon exorcism, I did wonder if
I was inventing the whole thing. It suddenly seemed too far-fetched. But the
E-meter responded, so I put my doubts aside and got on with it.

Originally Scientologists had taken months, even years of
auditing on OT 3, but since the late 1970s the emphasis was on moving on to OT
5 quickly. I finished OT 3 in a week. Again I felt euphoric. I waited to see
whether any new and miraculous powers became evident. I expected to
“exteriorize” from my body at any moment. Two days after finishing I felt
awful. I was worried that I had “falsely attested,” although the Auditor who
checked me out had failed to find any more “Body Thetans.” Still, I was worried
I might have to go back onto OT 3, which would mean paying for the course
again. It had cost me £800 earlier that year and by now was considerably more
expensive.

I told the Senior Case Supervisor that I was disappointed
that I had not achieved anything spectacular on OT 3. To my surprise, he confided
that many people did not. I expected to be sent to Ethics for even daring to
make such a suggestion, so I was relieved to hear that most people got what
they wanted on the New OT 4. This was also known as the “OT Drug Rundown” and
was supposed to free one from the cumulative effects of drugs taken in past
lives.

At the Senior Case Supervisor’s insistence, I borrowed
£1,000. On OT 3, I had supposedly rid myself of Body Thetans, so I was dismayed
to discover that OT 4 was also solely a matter of Body Thetans. This time it
was Body Thetans which had been Clustered through drug incidents.

The Senior Case Supervisor visited me again. I again
expressed reservations about the results I had obtained. Now he said that OT 5
did the trick for most people. He had the sort of eccentricity I enjoy and we
got on well together. He was living on a diet of nothing but bananas, because
he had heard that Hubbard was researching carbohydrate diets. Before

Scientology, the Case Supervisor had studied at one of the
prestigious Art Colleges, so we had topics of mutual interest. He even asked me
to put one of my paintings aside for him. He arrived at midnight one night,
with a Scientologist moneylender. I held the £7,000 check for several minutes
before seeing the insanity of borrowing so much money, especially at over 30
percent per year interest.

A few days later, the Senior C/S spent 13 hours solid with
my business partner and me, to convince us to pay for me to have 25 hours of OT
5. The Supervisor claimed that when I had completed the auditing, our business
would flourish and it would be easy for us to pay back what we had borrowed and
to pay for my partner and my wife to do their OT 5. My whole life would be
transformed and everything I touched would turn to gold. It is no secret that
Scientology Registrars take courses to learn hard-sell techniques.

OT 5 was called “the living lightning of life itself” in the
promotional material. Its “End Phenomenon” was given as “Cause over Life.” I
borrowed £2,500 and began. When I opened the “indoctrination pack” I was
dismayed to find that it too dealt wholly, solely and only with Body Thetans.

I did not do well on OT 5. The sessions are very short,
often just ten minutes, so 25 hours of auditing took weeks to finish. About
three days into the auditing, I developed a pain in my shoulder. You are
required to report any aches and pains which “turn on” during auditing and I
dutifully did so. For the next several days, we concentrated on Body Thetans in
my shoulder. To no avail.

While on OT 5, I was involved in the most insistent
Registrar interview I experienced in Scientology. An ex-Sea Org member was
working on a “project” to get people onto OT 7 in Florida. She tried to talk me
into borrowing about £50,000. I half-heartedly looked into borrowing the money.

I was displeased with the auditing and expressed my
reservations to my Auditor. OT 5 had been sold to me with the understanding
that the results were nothing short of miraculous. I was given a one hour
lecture, the essence of which was that OT 5 was simply a preparatory action
prior to doing the
real
OT levels. I should not have expected to make
any gains. I would have to wait until OT 8 and beyond for that. OT 8 had not
yet been released.

I had used the last of my paid hours, so I quietly “routed
out” of Saint Hill. I had not hidden anything from the Org about my attitude
and it was considered “unethical” to talk about any personal problem or
dissatisfaction with Scientology to anyone but the auditing staff of the Org.
So I kept quiet. I had more or less decided that it was my own fault. After
all, no-one I had met who had done OT 5 had complained and their written
“Success Stories” were usually pretty remarkable.

1.
   
Hubbard,
Scientology 0-8,
p.135
.

2.
   
Hubbard,
ibid
, p.134.

3.
   
Hubbard, “Ron’s Journal 67”.

4.
   
Hubbard,
Scientology 08,
p.134.

5.
   
Hubbard, “Section Three OT”. A quadrillion far from being a dance in one
of Hubbard’s favorite Alice books is the number 1,000,000,000,000,000.
Astrophysicists propose that our universe is 14.7 billion arrived at through
analysis of background microwave radiation from the Big Bang. A billion is a
fraction of Hubbard’s quadrillion, at only 1,000,000,000,000.
If you want to upset an OT3, suggest that they look up the word ‘cherub’ in a
dictionary, where they will find that their idea – that it means a baby, or
putto
– is severely wrong. This is the most common ‘misunderstood word’ among OTs,
and, according to Hubbard’s teachings, means they must go back, and do it
again.

Chapter four

“This way of life is so devised to snuff
out the mind that moves...”

—Jeff
Buckley and Mike Tighe

During 1982, a stream of “Suppressive Person Declares” poured
out from Church management
¹
Labeling someone a “Suppressive Person”
(SP) is Scientology’s ultimate condemnation. According to Hubbard, SPs make up
about two and a half percent of the world’s population. Unlike other people,
SPs are intent upon the destruction of everything good, valuable or useful. In
Hubbard’s philosophy, association with SPs is the ultimate explanation for all
illness and failure. Hubbard also called SPs “merchants of chaos” and
“anti-social personalities.” They are synonymous with anti-Scientologists, of
course.
²
I had been involved in Scientology for eight years, and although
occasionally I heard of people being “Declared SP,” no-one I knew was among
them. In 1983, however, a close friend with whom I was working was Declared. I
was summoned to the Ethics Office at Saint Hill, and shown a Scientology Policy
Directive which reintroduced the practice of “Disconnection.”

Hubbard had introduced the policy of Disconnection in 1965.
³
Once someone was labeled Suppressive, no Scientologist was allowed to
communicate with that person in any way. This policy had caused problems with
several governments and in 1968 Hubbard had acquiesced to demands that the
policy be cancelled.
⁴

Now the policy was back.
⁵
I was told not to
communicate with a friend. I did not have the choice, my friend was still a
“good” Scientologist, and insisted that I disconnect.

Losing my friend was not the only cause for concern, monthly
price rises were re-introduced in January 1983. At the same time, a newsletter
was broadly distributed, which contained extracts from a conference held in
October 1982, at the San Francisco Hilton. For the first time we heard of David
Miscavige, who seemed to hold a high position in the Sea Org. The newsletter
announced the “get-tough attitude of the ‘new blood in management’.” It also
introduced the “International Finance Dictator.”

Inside Scientology complaints must only be addressed to the
relevant section of the Organization and mentioning dissatisfaction to anyone
else is frowned upon. I wrote letters complaining about the ridiculous prices
and the Declare of my friend and, by inference all other recent Declares. After
each evasive reply, I wrote to the person on the next rung of the organizational
ladder. The curious titles of these Scientology officials say a great deal: the
“Special Unit Mission In-Charge,” the “International Justice Chief,” the
“Executive Director International.” It took me seven months to climb all the
way to the “Standing Order Number One Line.”

The Church of Scientology routinely reprinted “Standing
Order Number One.”
⁶
It gave the idea that anyone could write to Ron
Hubbard, and receive a reply from him. Although I did not believe this, it is
nevertheless the last recourse in Scientology. So I wrote to “Ron,”
fastidiously enclosing my earlier petition to the Executive Director International,
and a copy of his reply.