The Control Agenda - Control, Responsibility and Freedom in the Church of Scientology
Reposter
Title: LMT Literati Contest - First Place: Chris Owen
Author: Bob Minton <bobm...@lisatrust.net>
Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2000 20:12:34 -0500
The Control Agenda
Control, Responsibility and Freedom in the Church of Scientology
By Chris Owen
"An endless freedom from is a perfect trap, a fear of all things ... Fixed on
too many barriers, man yearns to be free. But launched into total freedom he
is purposeless and miserable."
(Hubbard, "The Reason Why", Professional Auditor's Bulletin no. 84, 15 May
1956, reprinted in Technical Volumes of Dianetics & Scientology vol. 1 p.
418)
"The only way you can control people is to lie to them."
(Hubbard, "Off the Time Track", lecture of June 1952 excerpted in Journal of
Scientology issue 18-G, reprinted in Technical Volumes of Dianetics &
Scientology vol. 1 p. 418)
Introduction
For the non-Scientologist, the fact that "the road to total freedom" should
be administered by such a prescriptive (and restrictive) organisation is
surely one of the strangest paradoxes about Scientology. Freedom and control
are fundamental issues for Scientology's philosophical outlook, intertwined
in a complex relationship where the promotion of individual freedom and rigid
authoritarianism co-exist in a bizarrely paradoxical fashion. One is reminded
of the crowd in Monty Python's Life of Brian insisting in perfect uniformity
that "We are all individuals". Yet to the Scientologist, there is no paradox.
What does Scientology's behaviour tell us about its approach to issues of
freedom, control an responsibility?
At the heart of Scientology lies what one might call the "control agenda" of
its founder, L. Ron Hubbard. Over his 34-year career as leader of
Scientology, Hubbard's preoccupation with control and individual freedom led
him to pursue four distinct tracks concerning issues of control in
successively wider spheres of interest: personal, organisational, societal
and cosmological. Although Hubbard would not have described it as such, his
approach was a fractal one - each sphere was essentially a scaled up analogue
of the previous sphere. The four spheres can be described as:
* personal control - concerning an individual's degree of personal control;
whether an individual was in control of his own actions;
* organisational control - concerning Scientology's degree of control over
its members; whether individual Scientologists worked for or against
Scientology's interests, which Hubbard equated with his own and those of
mankind as a whole;
* societal control - concerning the degree of self-control possessed by the
world as a whole; whether wider society was controlled by irrational
"anti-survival" forces or sane "pro-survival" forces; and
* cosmological control - concerning the degree of ultimate control over the
universe itself; whether the universe was controlled by the forces of "theta"
or "entheta" (roughly analogous to good and evil).
Although the interlinked, fractal nature of the "control agenda" can fairly
readily be seen in today's Scientology, it has in fact developed in a very
piecemeal fashion over about 30 years. It did not develop to any
pre-determined plan and, due to Hubbard's insistence that nobody but he was
allowed to amend Scientology doctrine, it has never been revised to resolve
the numerous inconsistencies which crept in over the years. This is the root
cause of the many contradictions which commentators have noted over the
years. To make sense of those contradictions, it is necessary to examine how
each thread of the control agenda developed and ultimately merged.
1. Personal control
Personal control is the oldest element of the control agenda and remains
absolutely crucial to Scientology's programme of self-improvement. It also
forms the philosophical basis for the rest of the control agenda, as the
principles applied to the other spheres of interest are essentially the same
but scaled up. Hubbard's ubiquitous slogan of "Total Freedom" is based
fundamentally on the principle of personal control, though it has to be said
that one would be hard pressed to find a definition of the term in his
writings. It is mentioned only in passing - and not defined - in the
otherwise comprehensive Technical Dictionary of Dianetics and Scientology and
Modern Management Technology Defined (aka "the admin dictionary"). The slogan
itself does not appear to have been adopted until about the mid-1960s,
probably as a reaction to the various legislative attacks and restrictions on
Scientology at the time. Perhaps its formal definition has been neglected
because "Total Freedom" is used so frequently that, to the Scientologist, it
needs no further explanation. In fact, the slogan effectively means "total
control" - of self and of the world around oneself:
Scientology addresses the thetan. Scientology is used to increase spiritual
freedom, intelligence, ability, and to produce immortality ...
[Scientology is] knowledge and its application in the conquest of the
material universe.
(Hubbard, Technical Dictionary of Dianetics and Scientology p. 369, 1975
ed.)
The quest for self-improvement underpinned Hubbard's philosophy from the
start. As he put it in Scientology 0-8:
"Dianetics is the route from aberrated (or aberrated and ill) human to a
well, happy, high-I.Q. human being. This breakthrough had never before been
achieved in Man's history. Scientology is the route from there to total
freedom and ability as a spiritual being."
(Hubbard, Scientology 0-8, p. 12, 1970 ed.)
The fundamental principle of both Dianetics and Scientology is that through
certain drills one can overcome mental blocks, previously completely hidden
to the individual, which prevent one from achieving full potential. Hubbard's
initial goal was, by later standards, relatively modest: Dianetics was
presented as uncovering "the hidden source of all psychosomatic ills and
human aberration" and developing "their invariable cure." The end result of
Dianetics was supposed to be a person free of most physical ailments, without
neuroses, with greatly improved IQ and a perfect memory. People were hitherto
unable to reach this desirable state because of the memories of painful past
experiences, dubbed "engrams" by Hubbard (adopting a long-used word
originally coined for a "lasting mark or trace"). Worse still, the "reactive
mind's" store of engrams was capable of overriding a person's self-control:
"In a drugged state, when anaesthetized as in an operation, when rendered
'unconscious' by injury or illness, the individual yet has his reactive mind
in full operation. He may not be 'aware' of what has taken place, but, as
dianetics has discovered and can prove, everything which happened to him in
the interval of 'unconsciousness' was fully and completely recorded. This
information is unappraised by his conscious mind, neither evaluated nor
reasoned. It can, at any future date, become reactivated by similar
circumstances observed by the awake and conscious individual. When any such
recording, an engram, becomes reactivated, it has command power. It shuts
down the conscious mind to greater or lesser degree, takes over the motor
controls of the body and causes behavior and action to which the conscious
mind, the individual himself, would never consent. He is, nevertheless,
handled like a marionette by his engrams."
(Hubbard, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, p. xiii, 1988 ed.)
The malign influence of engrams produced "aberrations" in the individual,
causing behaviour effectively to be pre-programmed by the individual's stock
of engrams:
Man is intended to be a self-determined organism. That is to say that as
long as he can make evaluations of his data without artificial compulsions
or repressions ... he can operate to maximum efficiency. When man becomes
exteriorly-determined, which is to say compelled to do or repressed from
doing without his own rational consent, he becomes a push-button animal.
(Hubbard, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, p. 278, 1988 ed.)
By erasing a person's engrams the individual gained a progressively greater
degree of "self-determination." In effect, the message of Dianetics is that
self-control is necessary for individual freedom.
Hubbard developed this concept several steps further in Scientology. He
placed the issue of self-control at the very centre of his new "science of
the mind" with the Communication Course, one of the first courses given to
new Scientology students. The drills which Hubbard devised for this course
are intended to "flatten [the student's] buttons", or to put it another way,
to reduce their emotional responsiveness. The best example is the
"Bullbaiting" drill, which involves a Scientologist talking abusively to the
student, trying to provoke an emotional response. The drill is "flunked" if
such a response is elicited. Eventually the "end phenomenon" is reached,
whereupon the student can respond to any insult with calm unconcern. Many
non-Scientologists have remarked upon this glassy calmness, which some
characterise as the "Scientology stare". This is a good example of how
Scientology seeks to instill a high degree of self-control into its members.
Much of the Communication Course covers similar ground to Dianetics, in that
it seeks to break down the mental blockages imposed by the reactive mind and
thus put the individual in full control of his own actions. The same
principle applies throughout Scientology's numerous levels. The only real
differences are the drills, the name of the blockages, the fees charged and
the ever more obtuse descriptions, as in this example from a promotional
leaflet for three high-level Scientology courses:
"The most severe aberration on your whole track is made up of an accumulation
of efforts to stop ... This basic motivation is so deeply hidden that it can
only be discovered by the powerful processes of L11...
"LRH [Hubbard] found that a person's spiritual progress could be blocked if
he is pinned down by an earlier lifetime that was evil... L10 [can] handle
such deep-seated aberrations that would be unapproachable with other
processes ...
"The thetan is surrounded by electronic fields, filled with aberration -
which is what constitutes your case. Ron's incredible discoveries on L12
dismantle big chunks of case that actually wrap a being up like a mummy."
(Leaflet, "The Flag Only L Rundowns", Church of Scientology International,
1996)
The pitch is simple: "Welcome to level 1. You lack true self-control because
of factor A. Do course X. Advance to level 2. Now we can tell you that you
lack true self-control because of factor B. Do course Y. Advance to level 3.
Now..." and so on. The cynic might conclude from this that Hubbard was not
actually promoting a bridge with a clear start and finish, but an endless
treadmill of problem-solution-new-problem-new-solution, each fresh iteration
being charged at substantially higher rates. Indeed, the process is still
continuing: the supposedly final OT 8 course has now been "revealed" to be
only a precursor to the posthumously released OT 9, the first of the "true"
OT levels. (Of course, OT 1 to 8 had previously been publicised as being the
"true" OT levels.) Judging from the accounts of disillusioned
ex-Scientologists, many have indeed concluded that they were being taken for
a never-ending ride.
One aspect introduced even at the early stages of Scientology training is,
however, markedly different from anything encountered in Dianetics. This
difference marks out a key premise of Scientology.
Training Routines 6 to 9 (developed by Hubbard between 1953 and 1957 and now
comprising the "Upper Indoc[trination] TRs") are involved not simply with
controlling oneself but with controlling other individuals and material
objects. Their aim is to "bring about in the student the willingness and
ability to handle and control other people's bodies, and to cheerfully
confront another person while giving that person commands". TRs 6 and 7
involve the student "steer[ing] the coach's body around the room" with
varying degrees of resistance from the coach. TRs 8 and 9 introduce the
concept of "Tone 40" - most usefully defined as an order that cannot be
refused (or "intention without reservation or limit" as Hubbard puts it,
somewhat more obscurely). It is initially applied to a "preferably heavy,
coloured glass ashtray" sitting in a chair, to which the coach requires that
the student address some surreal commands:
"Now get the ashtray thinking that it is an ashtray." "Good."
"Get the ashtray intending to go on being an ashtray." "Good."
"Get the ashtray intending to remain where it is." "Good."
"Have the ashtray end that cycle." "Good."
"Put in the ashtray the intention to remain where it is." "Good."
(Hubbard, "Upper Indoc TRs", HCO Bulletin of 7 May 1968)
The student also commands "as loudly as possible" that the ashtray "Stand up"
and "Sit down on that chair." As ashtrays normally are fairly immobile
objects, the student has to assist it by lifting it into the air before
thanking it. To the non-Scientologist this may seem bizarre. Nonetheless
there is a serious point to it in terms of Scientology's philosophical
approach. Whereas Dianetics confines its attentions mostly to the human mind,
Scientology is very much more ambitious: it seeks not only individual
self-mastery but control over the world at large - as Hubbard puts it in one
of his formal definitions of Scientology, "conquest of the material
universe".
This wider scope had been a logical development, in Hubbard's eyes at least,
from the more psychological approach taken by Dianetics. It had its origins
in the "past lives" experienced under Dianetics auditing which were reported
by a significant faction of the Dianetics movement, not least by Hubbard
himself. A more scientifically-minded faction, of whom Hubbard's medical
adviser Dr. Joseph Winter was a typical representative, was sceptical.
Nonetheless they found "past lives" difficult to repudiate: if subjectively
real "past life" memories could be recovered through auditing, why should
they not be as objectively real as recovered "present life" memories were
held to be?
Hubbard thus came to the conclusion that a person's history was far more
complex than merely a series of "present life" traumas. With past life
memories extending back far beyond the dawn of man, and indeed beyond the
origins of the universe itself, it was obvious that some sort of non-human
entity was involved. Hubbard dubbed it a "theta being" - later shortened to
"thetan" - signifying an immaterial entity of pure thought, currently housed
in a "meat body" (i.e. a human being) but in previous eras in robot bodies,
inanimate "doll bodies" and even completely independent of any material body.
A thetan with its full potential was dubbed an "operating thetan", or OT.
OTs, according to Hubbard, had extraordinary powers. An OT was an immortal
super-being, capable of the most improbable feats. While the unschooled
Scientologist undergoing TR 8 might have to levitate the ashtray by hand, the
OT could do it for real simply by the power of thought; even the very
existence of the ashtray was at the discretion of the OT. The universe itself
existed only because OTs had willed it into existence, trillions of years
ago. The "Super Power Rundown," described by Hubbard as a "super fantastic,
but confidential" procedure, "puts the person into fantastic shape unleashing
the super power of a thetan," producing "a being who has regained the super
powers of infinity." The drills performed in this course give some idea of
the way that Hubbard viewed an Operating Thetan:
"1. Get the idea that you have infinite power.
"2. Get the idea that another has infinite power.
"3. Get the idea that others have infinite power.
"4. Get the idea that you can cause yourself to have infinite power ..."
(Hubbard, "1978 - The Year Of Lightning Fast New Tech", Ron's Journal 30, 17
Dec 1978)
The acquisition/regaining of "infinite power" had been the objective of
Hubbard almost from the start of Scientology. As long ago as 1952, long
before he claimed to have liberated a single thetan from its physical
confines, the anticipated power of the OT warranted an earnest appeal to his
followers:
"[D]on't get spectacular until a few of the boys make it ... let's not go
upsetting governments and putting on a show to 'prove' anything to homo
sapiens for a while; it's a horrible temptation to knock off hats at fifty
yards and read books a couple of countries away and get into the rotogravure
section and the Hearst Weeklies - but you'll just make it tough on somebody
else who is trying to get across this bridge."
(Hubbard, A History of Man, chapter 5, 1968 ed.)
It is possible that Hubbard's belief in "OT powers" was a carryover from his
career as a pulp science fiction/fantasy writer in the 1930s. A popular plot
device of the time was that the central character was the unknowing owner of
amazing powers which he discovered through some kind of deus ex machina.
Several of Hubbard's own stories used this theme and it was one of which
Hubbard's friend and editor, John W. Campbell, was fervently supportive
outside of the world of fiction; the prospect of hidden powers being tapped
was a key reason why Dianetics was initially so popular with science fiction
fans. Hubbard's own philosophical yearnings pushed him during the 1940s
towards organisations which claimed to be able to tap hidden powers, such as
the Rosicrucians (which he joined briefly in 1940) and Aleister Crowley's
Ordo Templi Orientalis (of which he was a practicing member in 1945-46). Seen
in this light, the "discovery" of OT powers is a natural development.
This perhaps helps to explain why Hubbard felt compelled to predict the
extent of OT powers at such an early stage, well before he had felt able to
announce the first Scientology Clear, let alone the first OT. Nonetheless it
raised an important philosophical question. If thetans were so powerful, why
were they stuck in mere "meat bodies"? Why did they not even know that they
were thetans in the first place?
Here we come to a critical difference between Dianetics and Scientology, and
indeed a fundamental principle which underlies much of Scientology's doctrine
and attitude towards the world. Dianetics is essentially neutral about the
cause of engrams; in the examples Hubbard gives in Dianetics: The Modern
Science of Mental Health, engrams are generally caused accidentally.
Dianetics has relatively little to say about the nature of the world, other
than that it is distorted by the aberrant behaviour caused by the workings of
the reactive mind. To the Dianetician, the focus of attention is the space
between cranium and occiput, rather than the world at large.
Scientology takes a much darker view of the world, viewing it as being
dominated and deliberately manipulated by malevolent hidden forces for
billions of years. A Scientology pamphlet answers the key question of the
origins of engrams:
"We were OT once, a long, long time ago. Why didn't we stay that way?
The straight facts are that we ran into well-set traps, with no hatting
[training] to avoid them. And so here we are, eons later, on a prison planet
trapped in a one-life meat body dramatization of all the traps we ran into
so long ago."
("Flag Service Organization FSM Newsletter", circa mid-1997)
This is one of Scientology's key themes, and is of fundamental importance in
understanding the psychology of Scientologists. To a Dianetician, it is
enough to audit one's engrams and so improve oneself. A Scientologist takes a
much wider view: while he himself is initially held back by engrams and
related mental blockages, so is wider society and indeed the entire universe.
To achieve the goals of Scientology, therefore, it is necessary not only to
achieve self-improvement but to tackle the aberrations of the world at large.
The road to this noble goal is, however, guarded by ruthless and determined
opponents with a base interest in keeping the general population cowed and
ignorant. It is this combination of beliefs - the desire for general
betterment with the animosity towards a hidden cabal of malign forces - which
is at the core of Scientology's worldview. These forces sought to keep the
thetan in the dark about his true potential:
"... You, your beingness, is so tremendous, actually, that the force and
power of this small 'you' can actually burn down mountains. If it couldn't,
why do they go to so much trouble to fix you so you can't? ... Put the ball
and chain on him quick, because in the centre of his beingness he is. And
don't let him ever find it out, because then he will be."
(Hubbard, "Decision", lecture of 20 May 1952)
The development of this worldview eventually transformed Scientology from a
relatively harmless self-help group into a highly disciplined, utterly
self-centered organisation intent on imposing its agenda through any means
necessary, fair or foul. Freedom, control and responsibility came to be
defined entirely in terms of Scientology's own agenda - and woe betide those
who disagreed with it.
2. Organisational control
Organisational control is the second thread in the control agenda.
Considering Scientology's later reputation for authoritarianism, not to say
the alleged brainwashing of its members, it is surprising to find that it
developed relatively slowly. Nonetheless, the elements were present from the
very start of Scientology.
Hubbard had learned quickly from the messy demise of Dianetics amidst a
flurry of lawsuits and bills. Determined not to let the same thing happen to
Scientology, he placed himself firmly in control of the organisation and its
assets; he believed firmly that the financial failure of Dianetics had been
due to the incompetence and in some cases malice of his colleagues on the
board of management of the Dianetics Foundation. Thus it was that in December
1953, the very first Church of Scientology was incorporated in Camden, New
Jersey, under the signatures of L. Ron Hubbard, his son L. Ron Jr., and his
daughter-in-law Henrietta. The so-called "Founding Church" of Scientology, in
Washington, D.C., was actually established three months later; today the
Camden incorporation is studiously ignored by Scientology. For the Washington
Scientology organisation, Hubbard was merely a member of the board of
directors. However, he made sure of his complete dominance by obtaining
signed but undated letters of resignation from all of the other directors.
The same tactic was adopted for other Scientology corporate entities for
which Hubbard was nominally only a co-director. It was a simple but effective
device. Nobody doubted who was really in charge, whatever the article of
incorporation might have said.
While Hubbard's control at the board level might have been absolute, at the
local level in individual Scientology organisations, Hubbard initially
appears to have been relatively easy-going in terms of management. He was
happy at first to allow, indeed encourage the contribution of others to
building the new society which he desired. Very early Scientology
publications included new techniques created by and attributed to people
other than Hubbard himself. Books providing new glosses on basic Scientology
principles were written by Scientologists - Reg Sharpe in England, U. Keith
Gerry in South Africa and Ruth Minshull in the USA, to name a few - and
published with Hubbard's blessings. Hubbard himself wrote in May 1953:
"It is definitely none of my business how you apply these techniques. I am no
policeman ready with boards of ethics and court warrants to come down on you
with a crash simply because you are "perverting Scientology." If there is
any policing done, it is by the techniques themselves, since they have in
themselves a discipline brought about by their own power. All I can do is
put into your hands a tool for your own use and then help you use it."
(Hubbard, Professional Auditor's Bulletin no. 2, "General Comments", ca. May
1953)
Scientologists themselves were allowed a fair degree of self-expression, as
an examination of contemporary local Scientology magazines demonstrates.
London's Scientology organisation, then based on Holland Park Avenue, began
publishing a magazine called Certainty in January 1954 (it is still published
to this day). At first, it was very much a "club magazine" featuring
primarily articles by local Scientologists, under their own bylines, with
relatively few advertisements for Scientology products. In Johannesburg,
South Africa, the organisation there inaugurated its magazine Understanding
at the start of 1958. It followed much the same template, with articles by
locals on how Scientology would change the face of South Africa (not
surprisingly, it was seen as providing a new and humane way of handling the
"native problem").
This editorial independence changed radically - and permanently - in November
1958 when Hubbard issued a new editorial policy for all Scientology magazines
worldwide. In HCO Policy Letter of 24 November 1958, "Magazine Policy," he
instructed that "the basic purpose of the magazine is to sell books on
Dianetics and Scientology." The new policy immediately affected Certainty and
Understanding. Individually bylined articles became few and far between,
unless they were by Hubbard himself; articles by Hubbard became predominant,
often occupying entire issues; above all, the magazines very rapidly became
dominated by advertising of the latest Scientology courses, books and related
products such as e-meters. The localised "social" elements of the magazines
were all but lost as they became more or less exclusively instruments of
corporate propaganda and salesmanship. The same is true today; modern
Scientology magazines often resemble a cross between an illustrated catalogue
and a glossy sales brochure.
This revocation of local publishing autonomy was part of a broader move by
Hubbard to impose his absolute control over Scientology's management,
development and, ultimately, of his followers' lives. The following year,
1959, saw the publication of Hubbard's Manual of Justice - still a key policy
document for the Church of Scientology - which laid down directions for
internal discipline within Scientology and how to deal with what Hubbard
regarded as infractions committed against Scientology by the outside world.
Hubbard's former tolerance for local interpretations of Scientology had
already disappeared, due at least in part to the continued existence of
offshoots of Dianetics and Scientology. These were ruthlessly driven out of
existence; Hubbard instructed in the Manual of Justice that
"A person or an organisation using Dianetics or Scientology wrongly or
without rights, or a wildcat magazine, is best shut down or shut up by
hiring a private detective. Tell the detective "We don't care if they know
you're investigating them for us. In fact, the louder the better."
(Hubbard, Manual of Justice, 1959)
The Church of Scientology maintains a list - the most recently known copy of
which dates to 1991 - of hundreds of "enemy" individuals and organisations,
with those that have been "shut down" specially annotated as such. These
Hubbard termed "squirrels" and the act of altering Scientology doctrine or
practice without authorisation "squirreling", words which he invested with a
profound degree of loathing.
1959 also saw the introduction of an institutionalised security system within
Scientology. It is surprising that Hubbard did not go down this road earlier,
as he had shown clear signs of acute paranoia for many years previously. The
system he adopted was an extension of Scientology auditing, using the e-meter
to uncover "overts" and "withholds" harboured by the subject - basically
moral transgressions committed in present or past lives. Some of the matters
under scrutiny were distinctly strange:
"Have you ever enslaved a population?
"Did you come to earth for evil purposes?
"Have you ever zapped anyone?
"Have you given robots a bad name?"
(Hubbard, "Whole Track Sec Check", HCO Bulletin of 19 June 1961)
"Security checking" or "sec checking", as Hubbard dubbed it, did have a
positive side. It was presented as an equivalent to the Catholic rite of
confession, a way of obtaining expiation for one's misdeeds, and indeed it
was later renamed "confessional auditing" or "integrity processing" to
reinforce this supposed link. Hubbard drew a direct connection between the
exposure of "overts" and Scientology's promotion of self-control, arguing
that it was impossible for a person to gain true freedom from external
influences if he did not take responsibility for his actions:
"When one falls away from responsibility on the various dynamics he can then
become less and less able to influence those dynamics and therefore becomes
a victim of them. One must have done to other dynamics those things which
other dynamics now seem to have the power to do to him. Therefore one can be
injured. One can lose control. One can become in fact a zero of influence
and a vacuum for trouble."
(Hubbard, HCO Bulletin 23 December 1959, "Responsibility")
Nonetheless it is clear from many of the "sec check" lists and the related
context that Hubbard's priority was not expiation but the corporate security
of Scientology. The "Employment Sec Checks" are a case in point; the subject
is asked questions such as:
"Are you or have you ever been a Communist?
"If you were employed here would you try to damage this organization?
"Have you ever worked in an organization just to spy on it for others?
"Have you ever taken money for passing on confidential information?
"Do you privately think we are a fraud or a racket?"
(Hubbard, "Whole Track Sec Check", HCO Bulletin of 19 June 1961)
One might wonder why these might be an issue for a religious organisation.
The answer was that Hubbard felt that Scientology had become a target for
covert intelligence operations, hence the pointed questions asked above:
"As the Organization rapidly expands so will it be a growing temptation for
anti-survival elements to gain entry and infiltrate, and attempts to plant
will be made."
(Hubbard, "Security Risks - Infiltration", HCO Policy Letter of 30 October
1962)
Nor were "sec checks" intended to be entirely voluntary; Hubbard advised
South African Scientologists to strap e-meter cans to the soles of
recalcitrant subjects' feet. This approach (in HCO Bulletin of 30 March 1960,
"Interrogation") is to this day part of the official corpus of Scientology
policy. Holding back "withholds" during a "confessional" was a punishable
offence. In an Orwellian twist, even thoughts deemed unsuitable could get a
person into trouble; Hubbard ordered that
"Any anti-Scientology overts or intentions disclosed are to be reported to
the Ethics Officer and the Guardian's Office."
(Hubbard, "Auditors Who Miss Withholds - Penalty", HCO Policy Letter of 28
November 1978)
As the 1960s went on, Hubbard became increasingly obsessed with the internal
and external threats which he believed faced Scientology. It was perhaps
inevitable that he should seek to extend still further the regulation of his
followers' lives, as in his view Scientology could not afford the luxury of
tolerating internal misbehaviour when the organisation was so threatened by
the outside world. In 1965 Hubbard announced a new regime of "Ethics
Technology" to provide what is today claimed to be a complete system of moral
guidance. As usual, though, he went far beyond his ostensible aims. According
to Hubbard, 2.5% of the population is made up of "Suppressive Persons" (SPs),
individuals who are chronically and permanently "antisocial" and
instinctively oppose anything that could benefit mankind - such as
Scientology, of course. Another 17.5% are "Potential Trouble Sources" by
virtue of their past or present contact with SPs. Such individuals can be
found anywhere, even in Scientology.
Hubbard introduced what was, in effect, Scientology's own version of a
judicial system and code of laws in order to address this problem. A wide
range of "hostile" activities was explicitly prohibited, while a new Ethics
Branch was established to police the enforcement of the new regime. As in the
communist states of eastern Europe, the system relied on individuals
informing on each other by submitting what would later be termed "knowledge
reports" on any alleged "Crimes" or "High Crimes". A sufficient number of
knowledge reports, or reports of a sufficiently serious nature, would result
in the culprit being called before a Committee of Evidence ("Comm Ev") - in
effect, a court. If the level of "criminality" was sufficient the person
would regarded as an "Enemy" and declared to be a Suppressive Person. This
resulted in automatic expulsion from Scientology and exposed them to the
rigors of the infamous Fair Game policy, whereby, according to HCO PL 18
October 1967 Issue IV "Penalties for Lower Conditions," they "[m]ay be
deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist
without any discipline of the Scientologists. May be tricked, sued or lied to
or destroyed."
Although things have changed a little over the years - notably, Fair Game is
no longer labelled as such because it "causes bad public relations" - this
extremely tight system of internal discipline is still very much in force. It
has great advantages for the leaders of the Church of Scientology. It has a
strong direct regulatory effect on the activities of individual
Scientologists, reinforced by the way in which colleagues constantly maintain
surveillance and inform on each other. It enables Scientology's intelligence
agency, the Office of Special Affairs (successor to the Guardian's Office),
to maintain an early warning system for potential problems; the new recruit
to OSA's Investigations [Intelligence] branch is required to write an essay
on Knowledge Reports:
"ESSAY: Why are Knowledge Reports key to the Invest area? Why is an Invest
officer interested in them? Give 5 examples of how they could be used in an
investigation."
("OSA Investigations Officer Full Hat Checksheet", OSA Int ED 508R of 1991)
It is also an extremely useful tool for dealing expeditiously with perceived
dissidents - like authoritarian regimes anywhere, the judicial (or in this
case, Ethics) process is readily and frequently used to pursue political
goals. There is no separation between the executive and the judicial aspects
of Scientology. Nor, seemingly, is the executive layer of Scientology subject
to the Ethics system. The organisation's own leaders, including Hubbard
himself, have frequently ignored or bypassed the Ethics system. At a
conference of Scientology Mission Holders held in San Francisco in October
1982, the current leadership declared several individuals to be Suppressives
on the spot, without even the figleaf of a Committee of Evidence or any due
process. Surely an Ethics violation, but who would - or could - enforce that
discipline on those responsible for running the system in the first place? It
is, as with many other authoritarian systems, a situation where control can
be exercised without accountability.
One final point about the nature of the organisational control practiced by
Scientology. Both in this and in the previous sphere of interest, personal
control, things which non-Scientologists would regard as being desirable have
been jettisoned in the pursuit of the goals of Scientology. In the first
sphere, the burden of mental blockages has (supposedly) been relieved but at
the cost of suppressing individual emotionalism and effecting what amounts to
a personality change. In the second sphere, the risks of disunity and misuse
of Scientology technology have been reduced by establishing a tough
disciplinary code, rigorously enforced, but at the cost of suppressing
individual expression and liberty. It is surely a deep irony that an
individual who has gained control over "matter, energy, space and time"
should simultaneously be prohibited on pain of expulsion from expressing
views dissenting from those of Scientology's leaders or official policies.
The same trend of sacrificing something important for the sake of achieving a
Scientology goal is carried over into the third sphere, with disturbing
consequences for Scientologists and non-Scientologists alike.
3. Societal control
The third track of the control agenda, societal control, is concerned with
Scientology's relationship with the outside world. To the non-Scientologist,
this is perhaps the most significant sphere of control. What Scientologists
do to themselves or what the Church of Scientology does to its members is of
strictly limited interest to the outside world, except where it has to pick
up the pieces. The Church of Scientology's activities in wider society are of
much more direct relevance to non-members, not least because it is an
organisation with huge financial resources.
The development of this aspect of Hubbard's control agenda was, unlike the
other elements, driven at least as much by outside influences as by any of
Hubbard's own priorities. There is a clear causal relationship between events
in the outside world and developments in Hubbard's strategy. It is somewhat
ironic, given Hubbard's strictures about seizing control of events, that many
of the actions which he undertook in this sphere were purely reactive
responses to perceived external threats. Foremost amongst these threats was
that of psychiatry; Hubbard's reaction to this challenge was crucial in
forming his approach to wider society.
Hubbard was not originally opposed to psychiatry; indeed, in October 1947 he
had written to the U.S. Veterans' Administration to request psychiatric
examination and treatment to relieve his prolonged depression and suicidal
thoughts, although there is no evidence that he ever actually did receive
psychiatric treatment. Prior to the publication of Dianetics: The Modern
Science of Mental Health in June 1950, he claimed that he had worked with
psychiatrists to refine his "discoveries". His friend and co-sponsor of
Dianetics, John W. Campbell, wrote that "with cooperation from some
institutions, some psychiatrists ... [he has] worked on all types of [mental]
cases." Hubbard's first article on Dianetics was submitted to the Journal of
the American Medical Association and the American Journal of Psychiatry but
both rejected it on the ground of insufficient clinical evidence of the
technique's effectiveness. A lengthier version of the article was later
published as Dianetics: The Original Thesis in 1951 by the Hubbard Dianetic
Foundation in Wichita, Kansas. Significantly, it does not even mention the
word psychiatry.
When Dianetics was eventually presented to the public in book form, it was
printed by a company, Hermitage House, which was itself a publisher of
psychiatric textbooks; the dust jacket of the book carried advertisements for
other psychiatry-related works. Dianetics: MSMH was certainly not
complimentary about the profession, castigating it for "the practices of the
'neurosurgeon' and the ice-pick which he thrusts and twists into insane
minds" in order to "reduce the victim to mere zombie-ism, destroying most of
his personality and ambition and leaving him nothing more than a manageable
animal." Even so, Hubbard went out of his way to stress that he was not
against psychiatry as a whole:
"Many persons investigating the treatment of the mentally ill by
psychiatrists and others in charge of mental institutions are prompted ...
to revile the psychiatrist as unworthy of trust and accuse him of using it
to conduct vivisection experiments on human beings... A witch-burning
attitude toward these people is very far from the one adopted by dianetics.
Pointing to the fact that they have murdered minds which would otherwise
have recovered, labeling them "mind snatchers" and making a horror story out
of their actions is far from rational conduct. On the whole these people
have been entirely sincere in their efforts to help the insane...."
(Hubbard, Dianetics: MSMH (1988 ed), fn p. 205)
The scientific community was not impressed either by Hubbard's criticism or
his suggested remedy. His book received extremely poor reviews - the Nobel
Prize-winning physicist Isaac Isidor Rabi declared in Scientific American
that "this volume probably contains more promises and less evidence per page
than has any publication since the invention of printing" while a New York
M.D., Dr. Martin Gumpert, denounced it in The New Republic as "a bold and
immodest mixture of complete nonsense and perfectly reasonable common sense,
taken from long-acknowledged findings and disguised and distorted by a crazy,
newly invented terminology" and castigated "the repeated claim of exactitude
and of scientific experimental approach, for which every evidence is
lacking." To the Church of Scientology today, this marked the opening shot in
a continuing war between Scientology and psychiatry:
"The first attacks against LRH [Hubbard] and Dianetics are well known. They
began almost the day Dianetics came off the presses... Their initial attacks
have been mentioned over the years by us. First they got "technical reviews"
by psychiatrists hatcheting Dianetics. They published these critical reviews
in their psychiatric trade magazines. Of course, these psychs never even
bothered to read the book ..."
(David Miscavige, President of the Religious Technology Center, speech to
International Association of Scientologists, 1 October 1993)
Yet for at least two years after the publication of Dianetics: MSMH, Hubbard
continued to position Dianetics as being complementary to orthodox
psychiatry. In April 1950 he predicted that "Washington School of Psychiatry
will probably adopt it as a standard therapy" (letter to Russell Hays, 2
April 1950). When this did not happen, Hubbard claimed that his ideas had
quietly been put into practice anyway, since the rank-and-file mental health
practitioners did not share the hostility which their leaders expressed
towards Dianetics:
Under quiet test for over a year in the hands of leading psychologists and
mental practitioners, the application of this science [i.e. Dianetics] has
been found to resolve cases with considerable ease so that in at least one
state all state government treatment of the insane is shortly to be placed
under practitioners such as psychiatrists and psychologists who are skilled
in this new science.
(Hubbard, "A Brief History of Psychotherapy", The Dianetic Auditor's
Bulletin, vol. 2 no. 5, November 1951)
While often harshly critical of the medical profession and what he saw as its
brutality and inefficiency, he stressed that he was not opposed to it:
"[Psychologists, psychiatrists and medical doctors] are entirely in error
when they express the opinion that Scientologists are against them.
Scientology does not consider them sufficiently important to be against ...
We have no more quarrel with a psychologist than we would have with an
Australian witch doctor. We have no quarrel with a psychiatrist any more
than we should quarrel with a barbarian because he had never heard of
nuclear physics ... Scientology cares nothing about either medicine or
psychiatry."
(Hubbard, "The Scientologist: A Manual on the Dissemination of Material",
Ability Major 1, ca. March 1955)
This view shifted radically only a few months later. Hubbard announced a new
policy which stands to this day:
We are not even vaguely propitiative toward medicine or psychiatry, and we
are overtly intent upon assimilating every function they are now performing.
(Hubbard, Professional Auditor's Bulletin no. 53, "Ownership", 27 May 1955)
This desire to replace psychiatry was coupled with an intense dread of
communism. Hubbard's political views were somewhat idiosyncratic and were
never particularly easy to pin down - during his long career he was accused
of being everything from a fascist to a communist - but on the issue of
communism he was crystal clear. Communism, to him, was the opposite of
everything he strove for. Instead of psychological freedom, there was
brainwashing; instead of free will there was state control; instead of
embracing a spiritual dimension it was soullessly materialistic. Worse still,
the "slave states" of Russia and the East were content with resting on their
laurels, but intended to bring communism to the inhabitants of the free West.
This was hardly a unique viewpoint in the era of Joseph McCarthy and the "Red
Scare" of the early 1950s. Hubbard was, however, unusually preoccupied -
indeed, obsessed - with it. As early as the end of 1950, he began writing
long, rambling letters to the FBI to denounce those around him, including his
second wife Sara, of being communist agents. The Russians, he claimed, were
seeking to co-opt Dianetics in order to strengthen their own brainwashing
techniques. He claimed that he had discovered the nature of those techniques
and how to reverse their effects, and that whenever he approached the
Pentagon to offer the use of his techniques he and his organisation suffered
fresh harassment - obviously the result of Communist infiltration even at the
highest levels of the US defence establishment. Hubbard also appears to have
believed that his own life was in danger. His girlfriend at the time, Barbara
Klowdan, recalled his behaviour years later:
"He was highly paranoid and would be rushing along the street with me and I
would say, 'Why are you walking so fast?' He'd look over his shoulder and
say, 'Don't you know what it's like to be a target?'"
(Barbara Klowdan, interview with Russell Miller, 28 July 1986)
This was not simply a show for dramatic effect; there is every sign from
Hubbard's correspondence and reported behaviour that he was profoundly
convinced of the reality of the threat. It is not surprising that the FBI
stopped responding to his letters, one agent adding the handwritten
observation, "Appears mental".
Given his obsessive fear of communist subversion and his tendency to see Reds
under every available bed, it was probably inevitable that Hubbard should
link communism and psychiatry. The psychiatric profession was hostile to
Scientology; therefore communist infiltrators were clearly inducing it to
attack Scientology:
"The attack made by psychiatrists using evidently Communist connected
personnel on the Elizabeth NJ Foundation in 1950 and 51 and the attack made
on the Wichita Foundation in 1952 all ended on the same note of reports to
IRS and much rumor concerning what the IRS would do."
(Hubbard, letter to FBI, 11 July 1955)
"The attack on the HASI [Hubbard Association of Scientologists
International], like the attacks on the 1950 Hubbard Dianetic Research
Foundation found psychiatry and Communist connected personnel very much in
evidence and both active with defamation and very unreasonable - and
unsuccessful - attack."
(Hubbard, letter to FBI, 29 July 1955)
Hubbard saw the fight against "communist-connected psychiatry" in Manichean
terms, as an elemental battle of survival against the dark forces threatening
to enslave the West. In 1968, he explained to his followers the scale of the
threat:
"Western governments and peoples are under ceaseless and unrelenting attack
from the communist forces in the 'cold war'. The enemy has for a long time
been inside, getting laws passed, degrading the society, seizing persons in
the name of 'psychiatry', pushing up taxes, inflating money ...
"The orders the governments followed in attacking us were originated by REDS,
by the usually foreign psychiatrist, operating as per Communist instructions
to destroy all Churches and Scientology in particular ... We came to two
conclusions:
"A. We are largely on our own.
"B. On our own we can make steady progress.
"This then leads to the conclusions that
"1. We must be an awfully effective group
"2. And, wildly enough, we are better than the continued [sic] governments of
the West in defense from Red attacks ...
"We didn't set out to be a political force. We don't care to be one.
"BUT WE ARE BEING FORCED INTO TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE WEST.
"Wow."
(Hubbard, "Western Countries", LRH ED 69 INT of 20 December 1968)
This premise - that Scientology was "taking responsibility" for wider society
- was and is still crucial to its approach to the non-Scientology world. It
is a logical extension of its approach to individual and organisational
control. Individuals have to take responsibility for their actions, which
must be regulated through personal discipline; organisations have to take
responsibility for their members, which must be regulated through
organisational discipline. The difference comes in the direction from which
the control comes. In the first two cases, the regulation is top-down - the
thetan to its component elements (reactive mind, analytical mind, body
thetans etc) and the organisation to its component elements (in other words,
its members). In the case of society, Scientology plainly is not the
controlling influence. Quite the reverse; even by its own wildly inflated
membership count, Scientologists make up barely one tenth of one per cent of
the world's population.
This inevitably means that the world is controlled by the "aberrated" and,
worse, by the downright insane. A case in point is the invention of atomic
weaponry. It is no accident that the book What is Scientology? should
symbolise the suppressive 2.5% of the population with a picture of a
white-coated scientist and atomic bomb explosion. Hubbard argued, with some
justice, that the atomic arms race was the ultimate "counter-survival"
activity. He declared:
"Just as you would not let a child play with a .45-caliber automatic, loaded
and cocked, so should no relatively aberrated person with hates and passions
not at all under control be permitted to handle or direct the use of
anything as broadly fatal as atomic fission."
(Hubbard, "Radiation", lecture of 5 November 1956)
Here we come to the crux. Ideally the world should be run by sane,
unaberrated individuals - in other words, Scientologists. "Clearing the
planet", by giving the whole population Scientology processing, was the
ultimate long-term goal. Hubbard was not prepared to wait this long, however,
and was quite open about the means by which Scientologists could make the
world "go right" in the meantime. As early as 1956, he proposed using
infiltration tactics to bring nuclear arsenals under the control of "sane"
people:
"[T]here are two levels where we could operate here. One would be an
infiltration of the personnel and departments that do handle [atomic
weapons] and try to guarantee that those people that make policy are in a
good state of sanity ...
"Infiltration of atomic areas to guarantee the sanity of those who direct
atomic policy is, of course, something that would take time, but that is
being worked on."
(Hubbard, "Radiation", lecture of 5 November 1956)
These ideas were developed more fully in Hubbard's "Special Zone Plan",
announced in June 1960, in which he proposed the use of classic entryist
tactics:
"Scientologists not on Church staff should seek to obtain strategic
positions in society at large, by taking positions next to the influential.
For example, a housewife, already successfully employing Scientology in her
own home, trained to professional level, takes over a woman's club as
Secretary or some key position. She straightens up the club affairs by
applying comm practice and making peace and then, incidental to the club's
main function, pushes Scientology into a zone of special interest in the club
- children, straightening up marriages, whatever comes to hand and even
taking fees for it - meanwhile of course going on being a successful and
contributing wife."
(Hubbard, "Special Zone Plan - The Scientologist's Role in Life", HCO
Bulletin of 23 June 1960)
Government was another key area to infiltrate:
"And see this: a race is staggering along making difficulties for itself.
Locate its leaders. Get a paid post as a secretary or officer of the staff
of the leaders of that race. And by any means, audit them into ability and
handle their affairs to bring co-operation not trouble ... It is easy to get
posts in such areas unless one has delusions of grandeur or fear of it.
Don't bother to get elected. Get a job on the secretarial staff or the
bodyguard, use any talent one has to get a place close in, go to work on the
environment and make it function better."
(Hubbard, ibid.)
While Scientology might deny that this amounted to "infiltration", there was
no doubt that this was exactly what Hubbard meant; he had used that very word
in relation to the control of atomic weapons, and lest the Scientologist
misunderstand what he had said about the Special Zone Plan, he emphasised its
covert nature:
"The cue in all this is don't seek the co-operation of groups. Don't ask for
permission. Just enter them and start functioning to make the group win
through effectiveness and sanity."
(Hubbard, ibid.)
Within weeks of announcing it, the Special Zone Plan was subsumed into a
permanently staffed body within the Hubbard Communications Office of the
Church of Scientology - the "Department of Government Affairs". Hubbard was
even more explicit about the goals of this body, which still exists to this
day as a function of Scientology's Office of Special Affairs:
"The goal of the Department is to bring the government and hostile
philosophies or societies into a state of complete compliance with the goals
of Scientology. This is done by high level ability to control and in its
absence by low level ability to overwhelm. Introvert such agencies. Control
such agencies."
(Hubbard, "Dept of Govt Affairs", HCO Policy Letter of 15 August 1960)
He was equally explicit about the means to be used, again involving
infiltration tactics:
"The action of bringing about a pro-Scientology government consists of making
a friend of the most highly placed government person one can reach, even
placing Scientologists in domestic and clerical posts close to him and
seeing to it that Scientology resolves his troubles and case."
(Hubbard, "Department of Official Affairs", HCO Policy Letter of 13 March
1961)
Hubbard realised that this was unlikely to happen without opposition. In the
original Special Zone Plan he commented that "[o]nly the very criminal would
object and they are relatively ineffectual when you can know and spot them."
For this reason, he established a special department of Scientology to deal
specifically with external threats - the Guardian's Office (GO), forerunner
of today's Office of Special Affairs (OSA).
The OSA's internal newsletter, Winning, proclaims that its business is
"Auditing the 4th Dynamic." What exactly does this mean? It is, again, an
example of the fractal nature of Scientology's philosophy. Just as a
Scientology auditor seeks to uncover the negative elements in an individual's
mind, Hubbard suggested, so Scientology could audit society as a whole and
unearth the "rotten spots":
"You see the same thing in a preclear. He has a rotten spot in his behaviour.
He attacks the practitioner. The spot is located on a meter. It blows and
the preclear relaxes.
"Well this is just what is happening in the society. We are a practitioner to
the society. It has rotten spots in it. Those show up in attacks on us. We
investigate and expose - the attack ceases.
"We use investigators instead of E-Meters. We use newspapers instead of
auditor reports. But it's the same problem exactly ...
"We must convert from an attacked group to a reform group that attacks rotten
spots in the society. We should not limit ourselves to mental healing or our
own line. We should look for groups to investigate and blow the lid off and
become known as a mighty reform group. We object to slavery, oppression,
torture, murder, perversion, crime, political sin and anything that makes Man
unfree ...
"Remember - the only reason we are in trouble with the press or government is
that we are not searching out and exposing rotten spots in the society. We
must practice on the whole group called society. If we do not it will attack
us just as a preclear will attack a Scientologist that won't audit him."
(Hubbard, "Attacks on Scientology (Additional Pol Ltr)", HCO Policy Letter
of 15 February 1966)
The consent of the outside world was not necessary for Scientology to
undertake this; indeed, was not obtainable, for Hubbard suggested that "homo
sap" was so unenlightened and engrams-ridden that he would fail to recognise
help when it was being given. There is a notable irony in this, as Hubbard
had campaigned vigorously against the mentally ill receiving involuntary
treatment from psychiatrists, yet was entirely in favour of wider society
receiving involuntary "treatment" from Scientologists.
The Office of Special Affairs, like the GO before it, displays the control
agenda in its most naked form. Its formal objective, as stated in the "OSA
Investigations Officer Full Hat Checksheet," is to produce "handled
situations which result in the total acceptance of Scientology and its
Founder throughout the area". According to the official definition cited in
the checksheet, one of its key duties is to "[clean] up the rotten spots of
society in order to create a safer and saner environment for Scientology
expansion and for all mankind". The Church of Scientology does not, of
course, publicise this aspect.
While nobody would deny that Scientology has the right to put its case for
change or to challenge inequities in society, its activities go far beyond
this. The OSA is effectively the enforcement arm of the Church of
Scientology, guided by Hubbard's system of Ethics rather than by any
conventional societal norms. It seeks not only to counter Scientology's
enemies, real and imagined, but (to quote from the operational policies of
its "Investigations Section" as laid out in the full hat checksheet) to
"bring about the failure of influence of hostile groups or persons". Hubbard
was unambiguous in his view of the critics of Scientology and his
instructions on how to deal with them:
"(a) People who attack Scientology are criminals.
"(b) [I]f one attacks Scientology he gets investigated for crimes.
"(c) If one does not attack Scientology, despite not being with it, one is
safe."
(Hubbard, "Project Squirrel", ED 149 INT of 2 December 1966)
Scientology's critics have pointed out that this appears to contradict
Scientology's declared support for freedom of speech. The "Code of a
Scientologist" does include a personal pledge, which every Scientologist must
make, to "work for freedom of speech in the world." But it also includes
commitments to "decry and do all I can to abolish any and all abuses against
life and Mankind" and to "actively decry the suppression of knowledge,
wisdom, philosophy or data which would help Mankind" - by which Hubbard meant
opposing any who stood in the way of Scientology.
Strange though it may seem considering this extreme attitude, Hubbard claimed
that his motives were purely humanitarian. While his behaviour suggests that
there was more to it than that, it may well have been the case that a
humanitarian desire was indeed a major motivating factor; he does seem to
have genuinely believed in Scientology's efficacy and correctness, and put in
far more effort in developing it than one would have expected had he simply
been a con-man. His essay "My Philosophy", written in 1965 as an apologia for
his life and work, is a case in point. Although it has been dismissed by his
critics as another example of his notorious unreliability with facts and as a
cynical exercise in spin-doctoring, at a time when he was under especially
heavy fire from critics in the media and in official circles, it does
nonetheless point to themes which are present throughout his approach to
wider society. Hubbard declares:
"I like to help others and count it as my greatest pleasure in life to see a
person free himself of the shadows which darken his days ... So my own
philosophy is that one should share what wisdom he has, one should help
others to help themselves, and one should keep going despite heavy weather
for there is always a calm ahead."
(Hubbard, My Philosophy, 1965)
It is this philosophy which underlies - and is used to justify -
Scientology's entire approach to society, encompassing everything from
recruitment to "social reform" activities to its attacks on critics. Helping
humanity, even if in its ignorance humanity does not always want to be
helped, is the highest purpose of all to Scientology. It is deemed to surpass
every other consideration:
"So the biggest right there is, is not the right to vote, is not the right to
freedom of speech, or press, or religion, or anything else. The biggest
right there is in Human Rights, is the right to help.
"And now I just want to ask you one more question, looking at this, the index
of willingness to help being the highest index in demonstration of Clearing,
do you any longer doubt my statement that those people in Dianetics and
Scientology are the upper tens of thousands of the population of Earth,
because they volunteered to help, didn't they?"
(Hubbard, "Clear Procedure", lecture of 5 July 1958)
Scientology's approach to wider society clearly is not simply a matter of
self-aggrandizement, in spite of the well-documented excesses of Hubbard
himself. Ordinary Scientologists see very little of the large cashflow which
the Church of Scientology generates; their motivation necessarily has to have
a large interest of selflessness, as they personally receive very little
material return. Their undoubtedly sincere belief in the need for "taking
responsibility" for the rest of the world is, however, based on an inherently
unreliable premise: that Scientology is the best, indeed the only, way to
solve the world's problems.
That is a deeply contentious proposition, to say the least. The Church of
Scientology has the right to persuade the rest of society of the merits of
its position. The danger is that it also believes that it has the right to
impose its agenda unilaterally. Its control agenda for society can clearly be
seen to encompass both aspects: persuasion and coercion at the same time. The
fourth sphere of the control agenda, however, illustrates why its task has
been so difficult - and perhaps helps to explain why the Church has had to
put as much effort into coercion as persuasion
4. Cosmological control
Virtually every belief system that exists seeks answers to certain
fundamental questions - who are we? Where do we come from? What forces are
responsible for the workings of the universe? Scientology is no exception,
and its views on the subject constitute the fourth, final and most
fundamental aspect of Hubbard's control agenda: cosmological control.
Scientologists, and the Church of Scientology in general, are very reluctant
to discuss Hubbard's views on the nature of the universe, despite the fact
that these views underpin so much of Scientology. What, for example, is the
ultimate cause of engrams? Why are supposedly all-powerful thetans trapped in
"meat bodies" with no awareness of their true nature?
Such matters were not originally treated as unmentionable secrets. They had
been a logical development of Hubbard's "past lives" research in the 1950s.
While past lives were initially quite modest - 18th century English seafarers
or 14th century Chinese peasants, for example - they rapidly became
increasingly elaborate. It was not long before Hubbard was citing examples of
"past lives" trillions of years old in exotic extraterrestrial environments.
His followers soon responded in kind. In Have You Lived Before This Life?, a
compilation of "past life" stories produced by Scientologists during a 1955
Scientology congress held in London, the sheer weirdness of the accounts
rivals anything written by Hubbard. One Scientologist recalled life as a
sex-crazed child of "space parents" who was ultimately executed in a "zap
machine"; another had met his end under a road roller driven by a Martian
bishop; a third had been "a very happy being who strayed to the planet Nostra
23,064,000,000 years ago." The most commonly reported cause of death was,
surprisingly, falling out of spaceships.
It appears that, from the very start of his work on past lives, Hubbard was
convinced that the phenomena he "discovered" were influenced by malign
outside forces. There is a presentiment of this in the original Dianetics:
The Modern Science of Mental Health, where he frequently lays the blame for
engrams on the misdeeds of an individual's parents, usually the mother.
Within only two years he had already devised an elaborate cosmology covering
trillions of years and multiple universes. In the same month that he launched
Scientology, April 1952, he was describing to his followers in a taped
lecture entitled "Battle of the Universes" how Earth was being used as a
"prison planet" to drop off "entheta beings" who were being delivered here on
flying saucers. These entities were, he implied, responsible for physical
maladies; on attempting to uncover them through auditing, he reported that "I
am, for the first time in ages, completely without a somatic" - as if they
had all gone into hiding when he tried to find them. It was a theory he would
return to 15 years later, when he came up with the theory that people were
infested with parasitic "body thetans" which caused localised physical
complaints in particular areas of the body.
"Battle of the Universes" exposed to public scrutiny the methods which he
used to make his "discoveries". This involved hooking himself up to an
e-meter read by his wife Mary Sue, whilst trying out various ideas and seeing
if they provoked a reaction on the meter. The lecture - which is today deemed
confidential and thus off limits for ordinary Scientologists - makes for
fascinating reading; it shows Hubbard devising a cosmology by checking a
stream-of-consciousness narrative with readings on an early e-meter:
"LRH: Okay! Just ask me the questions and we'll watch the meter.
"MSH: Okay. What's the purpose of the entities in the MEST [Matter, Energy,
Space and Time - the physical] universe?
"LRH: Destroy it.
"MSH: Big tone drop.
"LRH: I'll be darned. Big drop?
"MSH: Big drop. Yeah."
(Hubbard, "Battle of the Universes", lecture of April 1952 - exact date
unknown)
Whatever provoked a reaction on the e-meter was thus deemed true, having been
"confirmed" by the meter's supposed infallibility. It seems likely that he
used similar methods throughout his "research programme", the results of
which clearly showed his fertile imagination at work. Numerous bizarre alien
races were introduced to Scientologists during the course of the 1950s; in
Hubbard's own words, "the Fifth Invaders, the Fourth Invaders, the 3*
Invaders, the people on Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, Arcturus, the Markab Galaxy,
the Markab System, the Psi Galaxy, Galaxy 82" ("The Story of a Static",
Professional Auditor's Bulletin no. 105, 1 February 1957). Some of Hubbard's
aliens were truly surreal:
"A thetan from the Fifth Invader Force believes himself to be a very strange
insect-like creature with unthinkably horrible hands."
(Hubbard, Scientology 8-8008, 1974 ed., p. 132)
A common thread uniting these alien races was that they were participants in
what Hubbard described as a "war between theta and MEST" (his word for the
physical universe). Thetans were deliberately being targeted and subjected to
brutal treatment in "implant stations" scattered around the universe,
powerful electronic devices being used to erase their memories and render
them dysfunctional by implanting them with traumatic engrams. In our own
Solar System ("Space Station 33", as Hubbard called it) implant stations had
been set up on Mars, Venus and in the Himalayas "about seventy-two miles
northwest of the Khyber Pass" ("The Role of Earth", lecture of 30 October
1952). Whenever a thetan's host body died, it would head straight for the
nearest "between-lives" implant station, receive a fresh set of implants and
be sent back into a new body - a process taking about fifteen minutes. This,
Hubbard claimed, was the root cause of human aberrations; by discovering the
truth about the alien implant stations, he had managed to break the endless
cycle of cosmological control which was trapping thetans on Earth.
At first glance, this seems to be a break with Hubbard's insistence on taking
responsibility - whether of the individual taking responsibility for his
self-control, the organisation for the individual or the Scientologists for
society as a whole. In the cosmological sphere, responsibility for the
problems of thetans rests not with the unfortunate thetans in the first
instance, but with the extraterrestrials running the implant stations.
Nonetheless, it is of a piece with Hubbard's insistence that "Man is
basically good"; no matter how badly individuals may behave, their behaviour
is prompted not by individual wickedness but by their implanted engrams.
Hubbard does make one important qualification - some individuals (the
suppressive 2.5%) are so badly aberrated that they cannot be helped at all.
In Science of Survival, Hubbard suggests that society "dispose of them
quietly and without sorrow", noting that "[t]he sudden and abrupt deletion of
all individuals occupying the lower bands of the tone scale from the social
order would result in an almost instant rise in the cultural tone and would
interrupt the dwindling spiral into which any society may have entered."
Cosmological control is, for Scientologists, perhaps the most important
element of Scientology; it explains who, what and why they are, and puts the
nature of the universe into a new framework. The Church of Scientology treats
the issue with the greatest delicacy - those undergoing the Operating Thetan
courses are sworn to silence and the handwritten notes produced by Hubbard
are treated as if they were military secrets.
It is, however, an aspect of Scientology that has caused it a great deal of
difficulty in terms of its public image. Very little of Hubbard's
cosmological theories escaped into the public domain during the period of
intense scrutiny of Scientology, in the 1960s and early 1970s. Criticism of
Scientology during this period focused primarily on its practices, especially
the allegation of brainwashing. After Hubbard withdrew into seclusion at the
end of the 1970s, a steady stream of defecting Scientologists - which became
a positive flood during the turmoil which the organisation experienced in the
early 1980s - brought with them knowledge, and in some cases hard copies, of
the OT levels.
By the 1990s the cat was well and truly out of the bag. The rapid growth of
the Internet proved to be the final breach in the wall of secrecy surrounding
Hubbard's cosmology, with ex-Scientologists defying the Church by
distributing copies of Scientology's most secret texts. The mainstream media
took up the baton, publicising such matters as Hubbard's account of the
tyrant Xenu's genocide of thetans on Earth (then "Teegeeack") some 75 million
years ago. The Church of Scientology, for its part, has fought a desperate
battle inside and outside of the courts to prevent any aspect of its secrets
from being made public; to no avail, as there are few if any significant
areas of the "secret scriptures" which are not now public knowledge. As a
result, there has been a subtle shift in the nature of public comment on
Scientology in the last few years, with its cosmological beliefs coming
increasingly into play. Whereas it used to be portrayed mostly as "sinister
and dangerous", to borrow a phrase, it now tends to be seen as kooky. The
exposure of Scientology's more unorthodox beliefs will certainly have caused
it some difficulty in convincing potential recruits to take it seriously. Yet
a certain degree of ridicule is not entirely a bad thing for Scientology.
Hubbard himself made this point way back in 1963, when he highlighted as a
"very significant win":
"Incredulity of our data and validity. This is our finest asset and gives us
more protection than any other single thing. If certain parties thought we
were real we would have infinitely more trouble. There's actual terror in
the breast of a guilty person at the thought of OT, and without a public
incredulity we never would have gotten as far as we have. And now it's too
late to be stopped. This protection was accidental but it serves us very
well indeed. Remember that the next time the ignorant scoff."
(Hubbard, "Scientology Review", HCO Bulletin of 29 July 1963)
Conclusion
Talking about a coherently defined "control agenda" is to some extent a false
premise. The body of beliefs and assumptions that makes up Scientology is
emphatically not a coherent system; it was assembled piecemeal over the
years, and the effect of external influences and Hubbard's own changing state
of mind can clearly be seen in its many contradictory elements. Even so,
there are certain consistent themes running throughout Scientology,
replicated through increasingly broad areas of interest - something which the
concept of the control agenda highlights.
Those involved in counselling ex-Scientologists have often commented on the
extremely durable hold which the belief system has over its adherents. This
is especially true of current members (see Bob Penny's excellent Social
Control in Scientology for an analysis of the ways in which Scientologists
are influenced by their Church) but also applies far beyond the confines of
the Scientology organisation. Many ex-Scientologists go through a stage of
continuing to practice Scientology whilst rejecting what they see as the
arbitrary authoritarianism of the Church; some remain in this stage for a
long time, joining the loosely-knit group of "independent Scientologists"
known as the Freezone or joining other offshoots of Scientology.
Hubbard frequently described Scientology as "the science of certainty", and
this is the true appeal of the control agenda: it provides the individual
Scientologist with a complete worldview ranging from his personal life to the
nature of the universe itself and promises him the prospect of taking
complete control of every aspect of life. This is a highly attractive
proposition to many. It is no wonder that people choose to follow the
certainties of Hubbard's control agenda rather than face an uncertain world
governed by uncontrollable and incomprehensible forces. Parting from the
control agenda is, then, not simply a matter of exposing Hubbard's errors and
personal faults; it requires a leap of faith, out of the light of easy
certainty and into the uncertain darkness of the real world.
CHRIS OWEN
November 2000
===============================================================================
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